Memories and Imagination
by Meeerf
Summary: Major SD3/LoM crossover. "Remember me," the Fairy begged, "make sure your children remember." But a lot can happen in a thousand years... 57/58/59/60. GRAND FINALE. Trust, betrayal, Mana, life... and secrets and legends of Mana.
1. Secrets: Memories

**Disclaimer: **Is this really even necessary?? If Square-Enix wants to sue me for giving love to their characters and providing them with free publicity, good luck. My cash value is currently negative five figures.

**Boy, this was one ambitious project. (And a record-length author's note.) **I didn't really expect to write a trilogy. I didn't even HAVE Legend of Mana when I first started. But I just kept writing and having fun… and then the idea for a SD3/LoM crossover appeared.

Well, what should you expect here? For general details on my style, check my profile.

Specifics for this story: It's rather heavy on history, covering the (interpreted) time between SD3 and LoM. This ended up giving heavy roles to Lady Blackpearl, Anuella, and a few others. I followed the LoM world history book… slightly, because frankly, a lot of it doesn't flow well to me. (Ditto for a lot of the LoM plot; SD3, I think, was much better structured, but hey, that's why we have fanfic.)

I have changed, added, subtracted, multiplied, mutated, recombined, translated into base 2, generated, engineered, and otherwise generally messed with LoM. I think I can guarantee originality at this point. If you are interested in something more canonical, I would be happy to direct you to the appropriate location.

**Meeerf, why should I sign up to read anything you say is going to be sixty chapters long? **Well, among other reasons, the thing is loosely finished. Not absolutely, mind you, but close enough… I couldn't finish the beginning until I finished the ending. So, yeah... stick with me, it'll get done.

**A few words about story structure.** The story is divided into duos of chapters, labelled alternatively "Secrets" and "Legends"; the duos are somewhat connected. Each duo will be posted together at one or two week frequencies, depending how much reality rears its ugly head.

Secrets: This comprises the crossover/background part of the story. These chapters are nonlinear and divergent, sometimes historical, sometimes philosophical, occasionally fluffy, but all with some LoM relevance. They take place in the PAST, either distant or recent. Familiarity with either my other stories or Seiken Densetsu 3 is advised. Put another way, if it's something I made up in my fics, I'll help you along, but I am going to have to assume you know the people and places of SD3. It's just not practical to start from scratch. (Cheat sheet: "Dark and Light", chapter 55, is a glossary that will help you out with background to SD3, if you don't know the game.)

Legends: This is… sort of a LoM novelization, and sort of not. -shrug- You be the judge. These chapters are linear, and occur in the present time frame. Since this is the first time I'm writing LoM, no prior knowledge is needed; it should stand alone.

**For the review-inclined: **I'd be especially interested in knowing what you find confusing and how you think things might turn out. If I like ideas, I may be able to work in. If it's confusing, it might be meant to be answered later, or occasionally I leave things deliberately open-ended… but in case I missed my goals, I'd like to know.

Oh, and by all means, pick out typos. It saves me the trouble.

**Credit where credit is due: **A lot of the story was helped along by Tiamat42 (and her heroine Ren), who first got me interested in Legend of Mana; that, and putting up with me writing lengthy late-night emails and sending insightful things back. I also lifted some info from the LoM forum run by Cheetah Smith. Some details of the Jumi knight-guardian relationship were modeled on Robert Jordan's Aes Sedai-Warder relationship. I read a number of other things on this site over the past few months, and was likely inspired by them all, but hopefully I haven't ripped off anyone directly.

**Warnings and Dealbreakers: **My style tends to be rather dark (again, check profile), so there will be sometimes-brutal violence, tragedy, profanity, occasional ingestion of alcohol and other substances, and sexual overtones.

Oh, and at the risk of spoilers, I feel obligated to tell you that it will be Elazul/Heroine, in case that's an issue for you. I can already hear one cheering section going "Yay, I LOVE that pairing!" and the other saying, "Oh, that's so overdone!"

But as Elazul would say: It's my story, dammit.

--

**1. Secrets: Memories**

The secret was in the tablet, and she could not pull it out.

She should have been able to, if anyone in this new world without Mana could. They called her the "Priestess of Mana" now. No "Queen of Altena;" that had been gone for a long time, so long she barely remembered that identity. Neither did she hear "Queen of Forcena" here, especially when her husband, King Richard, stayed behind. His health was getting to the point where traveling this far was no longer easy. At sixty-two, Valda was no longer so young herself.

She was still a beautiful woman, she thought, though her hair was a little lighter now. A silvery-pale lavender much like Hawk's; she had always wondered what mixed blood had brought Altenan purple hair to a Navarrese. But Altenan hair never got truly white, and the still-colored tresses let her believe she was still young.

Valda scolded herself for letting her mind drift to such frivolous thoughts. Generally, she was single-mindedly devoted to her work when here, at the university of Pedan, the institution she had founded to record whatever knowledge of Mana she could find. For someone who had once been a leader of the greatest magic-using kingdom of the world, it was an appropriate calling.

She had filled the gap left by the loss of Mana with this, storing and recording information for future generations, for the time when Mana would come back, when the Goddess would return. That, the loss of Mana, was the only loss in her life she had found it difficult to get over. The strained raising of Angela, the years before she could be with Richard, even the fragmented loss of years of memories that Koren had left her with, all these she understood, and accepted. But Mana was something she felt no substitute for.

She never missed being the Queen of Altena; she wasn't sure she knew _how _to be that nation's ruler, without magic. Angela was doing a much better job nowadays than she could hope to. Perhaps that was why she clung to every bit of knowledge she could find, to remember that part of herself as well.

It was safe to assume she was the greatest living expert on Mana. Angela had been stronger in raw magic power, but her daughter never had any patience for scholarship.

"It was in the ruins of the temple, Mother," Loki told her.

Her seventeen-year-old son was the image of his father Richard, more so every year, Valda thought, except for the violet hair. He had the dignity and dedication of his namesake, Duran's father. It made things easier on her.

She had been in her twenties and thirties raising Angela; now, somehow, at age sixty-two, she had a teenager all over again. At least this one wasn't the hellcat Angela had been. She was far too old to repeat _that _experience.

"Mother? The tablet?" Loki asked, snapping Valda out of her memories. Wordlessly, she reached for the piece of ancient Pedan stone that Loki held out for her, taking the heavy chunk of masonry from him with both hands.

It didn't look exactly the same, but she _knew_, knew this was the same tablet she had seen so long ago. "I've been to that temple," Valda murmured, half to herself. It had been several lifetimes, several selves ago. And in another's lifetime altogether, Angela had been to the same temple. She brushed her hand over the worn lettering that was in no language remembered, that only the power of Mana made comprehensible to humans, so only the mages could read it, like those who had once inhabited Pedan.

Loki almost seemed to understand her thoughts. That, his probing thoughtfulness, was from her, not Richard, she thought with a surge of pride. "I think my sister talked about this," he told her, "the tablet that told her..."

Valda tossed it over and over in her hands. "...where to find the mana stones," she finished. "Only that's not what it says anymore. Now it says the stones are gone."

"How do you know?" he asked, perplexed. "It looks like nonsense to me."

"You can't read it," she told him gently, pushing it across the table towards the young man. "You feel it."

His face twisted into concentration as he fingered the grooved markings, but his expression fell soon enough. "I don't feel anything."

"I'm not surprised," Valda replied, pulling the stone back towards her. "You were born after Mana left the world... maybe you need to have known Mana to know what you are looking for..."

"But Mana's _gone_," Loki protested. "You've said it, over and over. So what is it there?"

Valda sighed and turned her head away, staring at the wall as if she could will Pedan into what it once was. "It is gone. The tablet shouldn't have changed, nor should I be able to read it. But it contains Mana still. It's like an artifact of Mana."

"It has Mana?" asked Loki eagerly. "Then can we use the Mana inside it?"

Valda wished she could allow herself the luxury of such hope herself, but she could not pretend ignorance or naivete. She had seen too much, experienced too many things, for her to accept anything less than the truth. She caressed the ancient tablet gently, allowing herself a moment of remembrance for what was, and an even smaller moment to imagine what might be.

"It's not enough to make a difference," Valda chided him gently. "It's barely a trickle. It's better left to hold a memory."


	2. Legends: Imagination

**2. Legends: Imagination**

The sun was boring into her eyes as Ariesa woke up on the Lorant Tableland, and all she could think at first was, that she had a splitting headache.

She reached up, and found the source of the problem. At some point, she had fallen asleep with the wooden sticks she used to hold her hair underneath her head, and two pressed awkwardly into her skull. For the millionth time, she wondered if she should braid her hair instead and be done with it, but she quickly dismissed the thought as a minor problem, straightening the messy gold hair into something presentable once again.

For a moment, that was all that was in her consciousness, and then she started to wonder what she was doing here high up in the hills instead of at home in her nice warm bed. Not that it wasn't beautiful; there was something about the way the sun fell over the hills, and the view that stretched for what seemed like forever, that made her feel at home all over again, and absolutely at peace. She sat up to watch the sun peeking over the eastern mountains, a glimmer that might have been the sea visible beyond.

And then she remembered. She had come up here to get away from the dream.

It had been the same dream every night; she could no longer remember when it had begun. Nor could she remember it all, however many times it recurred; all she could remember was a faintly envisioned tree, and the feelings she saw when she saw the tree - fear, hope, bone-deep sadness. And then, clear as day, a wail that seemed to last forever and pierce her soul.

_Remember me!_

_Need me!_

_Find me, and walk beside me._

It was that wail that was in her head every time she woke up from that dream, often awaking with a start, sometimes drenched in cold sweat. That plaintive voice was begging her to remember something she was certain she had never known in the first place. But there was the odd feeling as well… not memory, but perhaps a figment of her imagination… that sparked an odd familiarity.

It was bugging the hell out of her.

_The Tree_, she thought. It could only be the Mana Tree. But that tree had burned to ashes centuries ago, the Goddess dying with it, and the brilliant power of Mana had dimmed to a mere flicker of a candle flame. That much, everyone knew, as well as they knew that slowly, over time, as the tree became more of a legend, Mana had snuck back in to become more of a reality. Some said that meant the Goddess was with them once again, but she was not so sure.

Actually, she wasn't especially convinced there had ever been a Goddess at all.

But what did this have to do with her, she wondered? She lived on the edges of a small town that itself lived far from the edges of a great empire. Yet she could not escape that dream, and eventually insomnia had started to get to her, as she paced the floors and stairs of her little home, afraid every night that this night, once again, she would be tortured by a voice she could do nothing to help.

Finally, she couldn't take it anymore, and late three afternoons before she had thrown together a handful of things in a bag, and hiked into the hills, hoping getting out of the house would get her away from the dream. She had peace for a couple of days until she had made her bed here, under the stars of a gloriously clear sky.

The dream did not come. But a different dream took its place, and in it was a young woman who looked not terribly unlike herself, but holding a spear instead of the sword Ariesa carried. Yet somehow, the woman urged her with the same message the other dream had, telling her to _remember, _to_ imagine, _to_ dream_. Ariesa shook her head slightly as if to either remove the memory, or clarify it, but no answers occurred to her, nor did she have any idea who the strange woman might be.

It must have been this strange location, she considered, said to house ghosts of the past. Rumor had it that an ancient king and queen were buried here together, forever overlooking the canyon from which Ariesa had received her name. (Though sometimes, she thought with a giggle, she liked to think that Ariesa Canyon had been named for her.)

No one really remembered how the canyon had gotten its name, she realized, as she began shoveling things into her knapsack. The ancient civilization that had been here had died with so many others in the wars that had followed the loss of Mana. Nothing remembered, though every once in a while one could find a souvenir of the past: a utensil here, a wheel there. Little was remembered, and less written down, and the names were swept away with time.

What had Lorant been? she wondered. Who had lived there? And what might they remember, if their memories lived today?

And why was she thinking of this? It was unlike her. Queens, trees, Mana... these had nothing to do with her. She loved reading these things in books, but she was just an ordinary person, and that was something that happened long ago. She must have led her imagination run away with her.

It was up to her to figure it all out, she knew; her mother had told her that a hundred times before she passed away. "_We are women, in a difficult world_," her mother had told her, when she was a girl. "_Ultimately, we have only ourselves to rely on_."

Her father had left long before she could remember; all she knew for certain was that he had returned to Granz, and its people's strange beliefs on the return of the Goddess. Cultists, all, but truly it did not matter; she knew she had to take care of herself, for better or for worse.

Ariesa finished packing her things, and began the hike back down the Luon Highway through the mountains, to the lakeshore grasslands where she made her home. But even as she climbed downhill, she could still hear the voice from her dreams.

"_Remember me..._"


	3. Secrets: Remembrance

**Author's Note: **It occurred to me as I was getting these chapters ready for posting that they might look a little slow-paced, and that might give the wrong impression about the story as a whole. Bear with me here. There's a lot going on, so I'm still establishing some of the background and setting the tone. It will pick up soon enough (like, on the next post), and the chapters will be getting increasingly lengthy as well.

Oh, and the words "remember" and "imagination" will not be used NEARLY as much after these chapters.

--

**3. Secrets: Remembrance**

"Remember me... make sure your children remember... because in a thousand years... Mana will return to your world."

Those had been the Fairy's last words, spoken in the burned-out shell of the Mana Holyland, pleading with her companions to keep the faith until she could deliver once again, until the tree grew again, until she would return as the new Goddess.

Angela had done her part for that, she thought. She remembered every time she called her child's name. She reached down to stroke Fairia's hair lightly. The name had been Duran's idea, but as soon as she heard it, she realized it was absolutely… right.

Her burgundy-haired daughter flinched. "_Stop_ it, Mother," she said.

She might have let herself become irritated, but Angela couldn't help but smile in amusement. The ten-year-old was at that age where she needed her mother still, but didn't want to admit it. She could remember herself at that age, lonely and frustrated, her overwhelmed mother struggling to understand her at the same time as she held together a struggling nation.

Angela did not have the same problem. Her daughter was _exactly_ like her, right down to the temper. Then again, she thought, no daughter of she and Duran would ever have been mild-mannered.

As if he could hear her thoughts, Duran came up on her other side and slid one strong arm around her waist. "Remember the way we used to be? We thought we knew it all, too."

"It was long ago," she replied, but they both remembered. And would always, no matter who they were now.

Fairia would be their only child, she knew. Angela was forty-three now, and if only one offspring had resulted in twenty-two years of marriage, well, that was that.

It made her daughter all the more special to her, and she tried to imagine what sort of world that daughter would inherit. Technology helped Altena survive for the moment, but the "magic kingdom" of Altena would never be what it was without Mana. Already many of its citizens had trickled in to the enchanted forests of the south, the lands of the elves, who had slowly begun to accept the outsiders in their mist, breaking centuries of isolation. _We all have to change in this new world_, she thought to herself.

It would be only a matter of time, she was certain, before the taboos on elf-human romance broke down as well. Carlie would be pleased at that, she knew. It had been those ages-old taboos that had driven Carlie's mother to try to take on her husband's human form through magic, and the sheer power her father had released had destroyed them both, orphaning their half-elven daughter. _If you're going to start mixing elf and human heritage, better do it the regular way_, Angela pondered with a mischievous smirk; she toyed with the idea of an elven girl with the violet hair native to Altena, twirling a lock of her own hair in amusement.

Things changed slowly, though, that was probably far in the future; and thinking of the future suddenly sobered her mood. Never mind her daughter, what sort of world would the _Fairy _find herself waking up into, a thousand years ahead? The daughter who was named for the being she had once hosted, already treated her mother's story like a fairy tale. So to speak.

She wondered how much remembrance she could provide.

"Angela, are you alright?" came Duran's voice, and Angela wondered how much of her thoughts had slipped across her face. Her husband could be incredibly vague about mundane things, but he had slipped into the role of her protector long ago, and by now he was so finely aware of any turmoil inside her that it never ceased to surprise her.

"I'm fine," she deflected, a little abruptly. Duran paused, then nodded; he knew it wasn't entirely true, and he also knew she didn't want to talk about it. Yet. "I... I'm going to go inside for a bit."

Duran nodded, and took their daughter to play in the garden of icicle flowers. Fairia's voice followed her, the girl's shrieks of delight fading as she stepped inside the castle, shivering in a way that was not from the cold.

Her maroon dress swished on the floor, and the tight bodice was suddenly very constricting despite the loose bell sleeves. She ignored the occasional servants and courtiers she passed by, wanting to be alone, alone with the stone walls of the castle that didn't have any better answers than she did. After a time, she found herself wandering to her study, and there she found the source of at least part of her worries.

The lamp sat there as if taunting her. It was a beautiful enough thing, the light source surrounded by a delicate glass bell, the light inside flickering slightly like a thousand dancing fireflies. Inscribed into the curved silver base was a line from a poem: _All of history comes from lover's whispers. _She fingered the inscription, and recalled the day she'd received it.

The poet was someone out in Lumina. The young city seemed to have attracted all kinds of sentimental types, something about the endless moonlight over the town that appealed to their romantic sensibilities. Angela could have told them it wasn't romantic at all; it wasn't _evil_, exactly, either, but it was the one lingering effect of the city's prior incarnation that Carlie had been unable to remove.

In her opinion, Carlie was crazy just for trying to rehabilitate the dark castle to the far north of Rolante; but Carlie was the chosen High Priestess of the Goddess-to-come, and as such she would be _damned_ (so to speak) if she wouldn't try to bring holiness wherever she could. Well, whatever, it seemed to have worked.

Somehow, in her time in Lumina, Carlie had acquired this lamp and quickly shipped it over to Valda, who had brought it to her daughter for additional examination. As soon as Angela received it, she knew why it was worth bringing around the world twice. She had been stronger in magic power than her mother, but her method, her mere _comprehension _of Mana, was completely different, and incompatible with that of Valda. But it didn't matter for this.

Angela had hoped that her mother might have been wrong, but she knew Valda was right as soon as she touched it. It _burned_. Not in the sense of pain; it was more of a spiritual burn, that seared her soul with something she didn't think she would be able to feel again.

It felt alive, and she could almost see the young couple whispering to each other in Lumina's endless moonlight, like the lamp remembered. It made her feel in love in a way she'd only felt with one person; it made her feel alone like when she nearly died in the snowfields. For a second, she wanted to smash it on the ground and run back outside to her husband and daughter. A much younger Angela would have done exactly that, but she recovered herself and with difficulty, severed the bond that had somehow been created. The lamp's flame seemed to dim.

It was something just on the edge of full understanding that she had felt, the Elementals whispering to her through it. They were still _there_, somewhere, part of this world, but there were no Stones which held their element in focus, no ties, no purpose without the Goddess. They _saw_, but they _drifted_, unattached, their silent frustration finding a place to express itself as they, as well, awaited the new Goddess, clinging to the artifact of Mana. It wasn't enough for them, but it was all they had.

Valda had nodded thoughtfully at her daughter's conclusions. "I've been struggling with it for months, daughter, and you saw immediately something that had eluded me." Angela had kept her face straight, but beamed inside.

Since then, though, the lamp had not given away any more of its secrets. Putting down the lamp, the Queen of Altena pensively wandered to the bookcase, fingertips wandering across the spines of ancient texts like old lovers. The magic knowledge of a thousand years, and more, was in those texts; everything Altena had once depended on, and nothing it could use now.

Suddenly she felt a jolt of pain, not unlike what she had felt from the lamp; but this was a true physical pain, and she pulled her hand away instinctively. Peering, she looked to see what she had been touching, and was not surprised at the answer.

The Forbidden Book.

It was the book that had once housed the most dangerous spells in Altena, so dangerous that most feared to even open it. The rumor was that it did not read the same to everyone.

She had not touched this book in many years. She had taken it to the Holyland to receive the Gift of Mana, the power that almost overwhelmed her. The class change, Duran still called it; she had never been able to break him out of using the slang, not that it mattered with no Goddess around to give Her gift. Then once again she had opened it, after the tree had died, the tiny new seedling standing alone in the Holyland she had scorched to the bare earth. Then, she had found the pages completely blank.

But something made her pull the book out once again.

She laid it on the desk under the lamp's light, and opened it at random to find blank pages once again. Of course. What had she been thinking? She reached for the book, ready to throw it across the room; it was much less fragile than the lamp.

A hair's breadth away from the page, her hand froze. She couldn't possibly have sensed what the book suddenly gave off.

A trickle of Mana.

Not the memory of the artifact, but _new _Mana, and she leaned in to gaze at the page, suddenly fearful. The words appeared before her eyes, glowing an eerie red that gave them a life of their own. The script was unreadable, but she touched the words, and the book itself let her know its meaning. Each letter stung her fingertips, but she took a deep breath, and moved on.

_"Do you want peace?" _

_Peace_, she thought. That's _what we thought we were getting when we searched for the Mana Sword, but instead we lost the goddess, and were led into an uncertain future._

"It's not peace," she said aloud.

The book seemed to hear, and its response bled into existence.

_"Do you want a nightmare?"_

The world without Mana might have once seemed to be a nightmare, but it wasn't. They survived still, and here there seemed to be Mana once again, somehow.

"It's not a nightmare, either," she protested.

_"Do you want a future?" _scrawled itself on the bottom of the page.

"Yes," she whispered to the book, and the words faded away in response. Angela slammed the book shut, determined to never open it again. She crossed her arms over the top, as if it might open itself, then laid her head in her hands as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders. Maybe it was.

--

"Mother?" came a tremulous young voice.

It must have been minutes she had been lying there on her desk, but her daughter's voice made her raise her head. Duran, entering behind her, came around the desk to put an arm around her shoulders reassuringly as Fairia climbed into her lap.

"What's wrong, Mother?" asked the girl, now all concern.

"I was... just imagining things."

Fairia frowned slightly. "They say the world is formed by imagination."

"They say that, huh?" Angela looked at her daughter, Fairia's earlier childish moodiness now gone, driven away by concern for her somewhat-distraught mother.

"They do. I heard it in Wendel. Maybe it was something Aunt Carlie said." Well, in the days of Mana, maybe it _had _been imagination that had driven them on. Maybe it was still, if the world could remember how.

"Well, one always has to have hope," her Forcenan husband replied. Angela pulled her daughter to her.

"That reminds me of something I'd almost forgotten someone telling me," Angela replied. "A person's life is ninety-nine percent fate; the other one percent is your hope guiding you."

Fairia squirmed. "Grandmother said that," she replied crossly.

"Does it matter?" Angela asked. Her daughter stuck her tongue out. "Hope, imagination, whatever you want to call it."

She hoped for a future, that would remember the past.


	4. Legends: Identity

**4. Legends: Identity**

_Who am I_, she wondered, as her eyes opened once again, this time to see the familiar roof of her home.

It was one of those questions you sometimes asked yourself, where the question didn't really know what kind of answer it expected. _I am Ariesa_, she thought with a half-giggle. That was the easiest answer in the world. But after the night in the hills above the Luon Highway, she wondered how much more could be added to it.

At least she knew where she was. She reached to the wall behind her little alcove-of-a-bed, touching the wood; the house had been built flush up against a tree, but this was the only spot where the actual trunk itself became part of the wall. Goddesses or not, trees were oddly comforting.

The dream was still bothering her. It hadn't changed, not really. But somehow, inexplicably, a little bit of herself had changed. Somehow, it felt more like she belonged in that dream, and she started to wonder why.

The question had started to bother her the very morning she had returned, as she walked up the lane back to her house.

There, wandering across her stoop was a Sproutling, which nearly ran her over in its seemingly mindless skittering. The leafy, childlike creatures seemed to have no real home or even a preference for environment, being found anywhere and everywhere; but none had never gotten this close to the house before.

"Excuse me," she had said, but the creature did not move from the entrance to her house, doing some odd circling plant-dance. Suddenly, it stopped, and looked at as if not comprehending she was a separate entity.

"I'm a Sproutling!" it gleefully announced.

"So I've been told," Ariesa informed it, sighing. She seemed to run into them in all sorts of crazy places - they seemed to positively litter Domina, and she could never be sure what they would say. "And what else do you have to say today?" she sighed, wondering what weirdness it would come up with.

"The world is shaped by imagination!" it told her.

That hit a little too close to home, after her dreams of ancient queens and kings on the Luon highway. And ever since then, that dream had changed ever so slightly, as if her imagination was taking hold. It was of the past, and she couldn't change that part of it, but... was there something that could be changed in the future?

"How does one shape the world?" she asked the Sproutling, barely suppressing the demanding tone creeping into her voice.

"Memories live on... and imagination sets them free. The past gives us options to shape the future. There are as many options as there are stars... I like stars!" The thing broke into helpless giggles.

She figured that was all she was getting out of it, but the odd moment of cryptic intelligence confused her. Was she supposed to do something, was she being given the option to do something, or did she just want to do something? She let her imagination wander once again, and it was that which had led her to wonder about herself, which had persisted ever since; and this morning found her laying in bed as the morning slipped away, contemplating that very question.

Ariesa was a sprite, one of part-elven descent; not much, just a couple of elven ancestors recent enough that she knew of them, distant enough that she knew no names. "Sprite" had once been a term for a fairy, someone with a spark of the Goddess, something the elves had as well, and supposedly she would have inherited it, whatever good it did her. She could hardly see the elven influence in herself, except for some delicacy in her features and her big brown eyes, and the simple knowledge that she was somewhat older than her twenty-odd years' appearance.

She knew her lifespan would last rather longer than the average human; perhaps that was why she had never troubled herself with these questions before? It was hard to be troubled too much about direction when one knew one had plenty of time to figure it out. She was one of the few races with that luxury.

Long ago, she knew, the various races of humanity held themselves apart with some sort of idea of purity. Now, of course, things were different. Elves, Nekos, other tribes and nations whose names were lost to time, had trickled, intermingled, assimilated and adapted, and all sorts of demi-human characteristics had emerged, changing the idea of what it meant to be human.

Letting her eyes drift towards the sun streaming through the window, she wondered what else could be said on the subject of herself, trying to see herself as an observer might. She was tall, willowy, and strong. She liked to think she was pretty, having examined her own reflection every morning as she fixed her long golden hair in place with sticks of Dior wood, twisting each into place until the hair seemed suitably constrained for the day.

She lived alone in the house that her mother had left her. It was a comfortable, roomy place near the north lake shore; a short distance from the edge of Domina, a small town in the part of the land that belonged to no nation, land the empire of Forsena had not gotten around to conquering yet. Possibly, they didn't want to be bothered; the cities of the empire all produced metal for its forges, but the towns of the fertile area of Lake Kilma produced more peaceful goods.

Topple, on the west shore, had made the soft cotton sheets she was now snuggling in, and from Judd, on the coast some ways north of Domina, came the hemp that comprised her rugs. Menos, west of Topple, produced bronze unsuitable for the sort of equipment the Empire used, while the area's largest city, Wendel, on the lake's south shore, mined a silver that wasn't much better for armor and weaponry.

As a result, the lake area had become a fairly populous hub where many of the world's free people chose to live relatively undisturbed. She doubted Domina would change until a new age began. They might be unimportant to the world, but the citizens in this part of the world knew what freedom was.

Even in such a peaceful place, there was a problem with monsters running loose - those that hadn't been domesticated - and there were fighters to fix the problem. And that's what she was. Mark and Jennifer ran the town shop, Miss Yuka kept the inn for whoever happened to be travelling through, Reverend Nouvelle bound them together with tales of the Mana Goddess, and she whacked things as needed. She was outside training with her sword, every day, and she would be doing so today again, if she ever got out of bed.

Guilt crept in, as she looked at the sunbeams and calculated it must be close to noon. She pulled herself out of bed, tugging on underclothes, one of her many serviceable shift-type dresses in a soft pink-gray, and suede boots to match, reluctantly heading downstairs to face the day.

The kitchen, and breakfast, tempted her, but on a whim, she looked towards the unopened library door opposite instead. Ariesa had an extensive collection that her family had collected over some years, and it was there that she often lost herself in stories of the past, the same type of stories that seemed to have infected her head now. And it seemed to be where her steps led her this morning. Times like these, it helped to have that refuge.

She sat at her desk, and pulled a book at random. It was a treatise on lingering Mana in artifacts, written by someone named Valda, supposedly an ancient queen, though no one Ariesa had heard of. She flipped through the pages idly with her right hand, her left hand absentmindedly playing with a set of colored blocks, scooping them up in one hand to let them fall to the desk, then repeating the motion in a nervous habit she had repeated a hundred times before. But her eyes crossed the pages of the book without understanding, and in frustration, she slammed the book shut, leaning back in the chair. It made her want something, want to _be_ something, but despaired of much happening in her current situation. The lake area might be one of the most hospitable areas to live, but sometimes it felt like the edge of the world.

The question would not leave her. She was a scholar, a craftsman, a friend, a homebody sometimes. That was what she was today. But past? and future?

And she was lonely.

The last came out of nowhere, and she wondered what in her head had brought that up. _Was she?_ She had never thought of herself that way, she had plenty of friends, but somehow it fell on her like a ton of bricks. If she was, then why, and what could be done about it? Or would it just linger forever? Was imagination an escape, a retreat into fantasy, or was it the way out?

Heavy questions to begin the day with. She pushed them out of her head as she went to make breakfast as she had a thousand times before, to begin a day like any other, leaving the empty breakfast dishes on the table as she lay on the couch to find her self dozing once again.

Until she heard a squeal coming from the window of her kitchen.

"Pumpkins have taken over West Domina!"

Ariesa sat up with a jolt at the unexpected wake-up call. Surely she must have dreamed what she just heard? She ran to the window and stuck out her head to see the local mail-carrier, a pelican named Amalette, flapping profusely in her general direction.

"What did you say?" she demanded groggily.

"Pumpkins! It's really hairy-scary!" replied the bird, stuffing various envelopes into her mailbox. "Here's your mail! Have a nice day!"

She stepped outside to pick up her mail, studiously ignoring the Sproutling that had apparently decided the front path was its new home, and contemplated the next step. The usual junk mail. Some bills; various advertisements from Niccolo, the local peddler; an announcement of new arrivals at Knight of Jema, the shop run by Mark and Jennifer; a 2-for-1 coupon at the town pub.

Well, Ariesa sighed, she was a warrior by trade. Problems happened, it was her job to fix them. But _pumpkins_? It was practically beneath her.

Nevertheless, twenty minutes later, she found herself, sword in hand, walking towards Domina to handle - whatever it was.

The populace practically scurried up to meet her as soon as she crossed under the hand-lettered sign that marked the entry into town.

Jennifer ran up to her, large butterfly-like wings flapping anxiously."Ariesa! Thank the Goddess! You're here!"

_There is no Goddess_, she thought, _but whatever_.

Her negative mood seemed to be difficult to shake, but she found the presence to reassure the villagers that she would take care of business, drawing her sword dramatically for emphasis. It was a large crowd, mostly people she knew, a couple unfamiliar faces, most likely whatever tenants the inn was hosting this week. She glimpsed a Neko, her cat-like face slightly worried around the eyes, tail swishing inquisitively from underneath her lavender silk skirt; a light outfit, but shaped for movement and fighting, much as her own was.

The crowd oohed and aahed as they always did, in a way that made her feel a little bad, like she was showing off. It was almost a relief when she noticed the young man near the door of the inn, arms crossed in casual indifference. Teal green, chin length hair hung somewhat messily, and had she not had somewhere else to go, she would have run over to teasingly offer a hair-stick to get it out of his face.

He was clearly not so impressed as the rest. But then again, he was a stranger, one of those who occasionally came through Domina on the way to wherever it was they really wanted to go. She was used to seeing those around the inn, but, there was something different about this one, some determination she saw in few in this part of the world.

Her eyes swept over him, but his gaze drew hers, as if not letting her get away with such a cursory inspection. She found her brown eyes tugged towards piercing blue ones.

His eyes held hers for a moment, as if weighing her. She was about to look away, when abruptly, her tore his eyes away first and entered the inn with no further gesture.

It had only been a split second, but in the fragile state of mind she was in this morning, it gave her chills. "Who's that?" she asked Jennifer.

"Him?" the other woman replied. "Some guy, here looking for his girlfriend or sister or whatever. Quite pushy about it, too. He came to the shop yesterday, but Mark was watching it that day, and sent him on his way."

"I see." Ariesa recovered herself, and turned back to the matter at hand.

The crowd melted away from her as she strode forward towards the west end of Domina with increasing trepidation, some following her to lend support but all falling away eventually until finally, all alone, she made that final turn down the last street to the outskirts.

Pumpkins. Sure enough, there they were. Gargantuan monstrosities with contorted faces. Ugly, sure, but nothing to be afraid of. Ariesa readied her sword.

"Stop right there!" A voice jolted the young woman out of her battle-trance, and she froze, looking around for the source.

"Kneel, before Bud the Malignant!" came the voice again, and this time, Ariesa spotted it.. a young, purple-haired elven boy.

"Take it easy, Bud!" called another voice, slightly higher and more feminine. Ariesa swiveled her head to find an elven girl, clearly the other's sister. At least the girl was a little cool-headed.

"Lisa, you and I will rule the world as brother and sister!" Bud announced, putting fist to his chest proudly.

Lisa only sighed, and leaned back against one of the monstrous pieces of fruit. "With pumpkins? As if! Bud, you're such a goofball!"

"Aw, Lisa, don't be such a drag!"

"Now hold on, you two!" Ariesa interrupted the tender sibling exchange. "What exactly are you trying to do here? You've scared the entire town of Domina half to death! And these are nothing but pumpkins!"

"That's what you think!" Bud replied, and suddenly the plants roared to life.

They bounded towards her, faces permanently contorted into those crazed expressions. Ariesa shifted into action without a thought, and her sword cut cleanly through one, two, then three, only to find herself knocked flat on her back when one of the things exploded.

"A pumpkin bomb?" she thought to herself for only a split second as she resumed the assault.

Bud and Lisa looked suddenly concerned as Ariesa rapidly decimated their pumpkin army. They seemed frozen to the spot, until Bud pulled out a small harp, and with a quick strum, Ariesa suddenly found herself dodging boulders that seemed to come from thin air.

"What was _that_?" she cried, only to hear childish giggles from the twins.

"All hail Bud the Magnificent - _aack_!" The speech of Bud the Magnificent was suddenly cut short when he was grabbed roughly by the back of his robe.

Lisa stood a few steps away, gaping slightly. "Please don't hurt my brother. Please," she sniveled.

"I have no plans to, as long as the two of you behave," Ariesa replied. The two practically fell all over each other, promising never to do it again, and Ariesa let her burden drop to the ground.

"How did you even come up with pumpkins?" she asked, slightly confused by the whole scenario.

Bud the Magnificent was now Bud the Sulky. "We read a book on a pumpkin-monster," he told her. "It sounded pretty cool."

Two pairs of elven eyes regarded her, but where she thought they would be afraid of her, they looked only in awe.

Lisa spoke up first. "You must be a great warrior," she said admiringly.

"Yeah! Lisa, are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Bud replied.

"I don't know, Bud, what _are_ you thinking?" Brother and sister exchanged a glance, then Lisa gave a nod, but about _what_, Ariesa was thoroughly bewildered.

"Make us your apprentices!" Bud announced with the same attempted air of command in which he had tried to tell her to kneel a few minutes before. "We want to be great warriors too!"

"I thought you wanted to be a great magician?" Ariesa asked.

"That too... but you know, both doesn't hurt."

"Well... I don't know..." Ariesa waffled. "I mean, you just met me... you don't know if I'd be any good taking care of you... and isn't there someone waiting for you?"

The twins exchanged a long, sad glance that made Ariesa shift from foot to foot uncomfortably. "Well... the truth is..." Lisa spoke at last, "we really don't have anywhere to go."

That struck Ariesa's heart. _Orphans?_ They had each other, but in a sense, they were more alone in this world than she herself was. "Okay," she finally delivered in a quavering voice, still not sure if she was doing the right thing. Was it just because she felt lonely herself?

The question was somewhat answered when she suddenly felt herself surrounded by big elven hugs. "Thank you! Thank you!" came the voices, making her feel both warm and fuzzy and incredibly self-conscious simultaneously. She gave them a minute before gently extricating herself.

"Just one question - what was that with the harp?" Ariesa asked.

The twins looked at each other, that produced a variety of pocket size instruments. "It's one way to do magic," Lisa explained. "It calls on the elementals." She handed one over for Ariesa's inspection.

Ariesa turned it over and over in her hands, but it still looked like an ordinary flute to her. "What's the difference between using this and just doing magic?"

"It's a little complicated," Lisa explained patiently. "Most of magic today... it's items, reagents, and other intermediates that have a bit of Mana in them. You don't exactly know what elements you're getting, so sometimes things don't work the way you expect. This asks the elementals directly for the power of the elements. They're kind of shy, or hard to find, or something… you have to coax them to come to you. I guess you could say it brings a more pure form of magic, and it's more powerful, too."

Suddenly something clicked for Ariesa. "So the Mana we've been using since the wars... it's not really true Mana?"

"It's remnants," Lisa told her sadly. "And people are fighting over those remnants like they have been since the Tree burned. You don't really have _real _Mana without the Goddess."

That hit a little too close too home for Ariesa. The dream. The now-dead tree. Why was all this in her imagination now?

--

The rain beat against the window, one of those odd storms that mostly drizzles against the pane until a rogue burst of wind sent water slamming against it, rattling noisily. There would be no leaving the house today. Even the Sproutling had left the front steps for somewhere presumably drier.

It was the sort of weather that might make one lonely, if her house hadn't become fuller than before.

She had given the twins the room in the attic that had been her own room before her mother passed away; it still had the furnishings of her childhood, and Bud had magnanimously offered the bed to Lisa while he slept in a makeshift setup on the floor. Ariesa had gotten as far as getting him some blankets and a decent mattress in the week or two since they had come to live with her, but he still needed a bed frame and a pillow that wasn't from her couch. Still, the place was coming along nicely, and she was starting to feel as if they had lived there forever.

Her own room comprised the entire second floor, and by the window was a large, comfortable padded bench, with more than enough room to hold the three of them as they whiled away the day watching the rain pour down.

"Did you know," Bud began, "that when a Jumi cries, the sky cries with them?"

"What's a Jumi?" Ariesa asked, perplexed.

The twins looked at each other, then Bud began. "They're a dead race."

"A dying race," Lisa corrected. "They used to be able to cure with their tears, but people started hunting them… and now no one knows where they are anymore. They're all alone."

_Alone… _Ariesa felt suddenly grateful that she _wasn't_, not anymore, and impulsively reached out to hug Bud. Bud squiggled out of her grasp, and she settled for having him lean on her shoulder.

It was hard for her to remember that they weren't truly children… they were certainly short enough. But then again, she, of all people should know; it was the elf heritage at work again. She herself had been rather minute as a child, only to outgrow everyone else in a hurry as she approached adulthood. The true elven age always showed in the eyes, and she could see there that they were on that awkward cusp between child and adult.

It made her wonder what it would really be like to have a child. Having Bud and Lisa living with her had awakened some part of her that wanted, that needed – to love? To protect?

Maybe a little of both. Maybe it was just _direction_ she craved, something to _do_, and someone to do it for outside herself.

It was another one of those things she had the luxury of putting off, knowing she had plenty of time. She hadn't found much of anyone to love, really, since her mother. There had been a few boyfriends here and there, and every once in a while someone just passing through who happened to amuse her, but… She unconsciously twisted a bracelet the last had given her, a silver hoop inlaid with gemstones. A nice piece of jewelry, but she seemed to have forgotten his name.

She found herself nodding off, the rain having settled to an even rhythm that cooed like a lullaby, as did Bud and Lisa's idle chatter. Feeling more peaceful than she had in some time, she realized, before wakefulness slipped away, that the dream had not returned since the twins had arrived.


	5. Secrets: Stones

**5. Secrets: Stones**

Shayla picked her way through the brush of what had once been called the Moonlight Forest, cursing the impulse that had led her to wear grey silks instead of something a little more practical. It was her one concession to femininity, and after hours of snagging her garments on all sorts of plant life, she was considering giving that up as well.

"Be careful, Princess," teased Leroy.

"Why do you call me that?" Shayla responded automatically, the discussion habitual and familiar. "If anyone is a princess in our family, it is Leires. I'm surprised they even address me as Lady."

Her brother's response was just as automatic. "Leires always wanted to be a princess. I don't think our niece ever got over being born into a family of Priests. But your grandmother was the elven princess, and you are her granddaughter, despite being away from the land of the elves. So are you the lost princess?"

"Well, Leires is a queen, and has been for twenty years, since she married the Beast King. I'm sure she's okay with that."

Leroy grinned. "Well, hopefully she won't throw us into the dungeon when she learns we're raiding the tower her husband named for her. Wasn't 'Moonreading Tower' good enough?"

Shayla only laughed, tossing the long, silver-gold hair they shared, that was a gift from their father, Elliott, the Prince of Rolante.

They had been named for their grandparents, the human and elf who had fallen in love to produce their mother Carlie. That had been a hundred and eighteen years ago, but the elven blood traveling through their veins gave them the gift of longevity. Leroy was seventy-five, and Shayla seventy, but neither looked a day over thirty.

Carlie's family were among the few who fully believed the legend of Mana. As High Priestess, Carlie did what she could to preserve memory; but as time flowed, memory changed and what was called "truth" changed right along with it. It had been barely a hundred years since the ancient Goddess died, but most of the world's population was rapidly revamping the tales they had heard of it all.

Shayla and Leroy knew better. Their mother had been there, their mother had met that ancient Goddess, and her stories had been etched on their brains since infancy. And it was those very stories that had brought them out here, into the forest once covered by perpetual darkness and moonlight its only guide, to find the remnants of the Mana Stone of the Moon.

They had not been born yet when Valda had found the first artifacts containing remnants of Mana, but as soon as they were old enough to grasp it, Leroy and Shayla had jumped on the quest. They had found a stone sculpture of an eye which they had passed on to their mother, and a medallion of odd metalwork in the nascent Navarre jungle. It had been sort of a lark for them, until the sorceress Anise started causing problems in the world.

Anise was too young to have known her great-grandmother Angela; Shayla only had bare memories of the Altenan queen herself. She had often wondered if it was jealousy, curiosity, ambition, or all of the above that had driven Anise to the burnt remnants of the Mana Holyland, searching for whatever power might be left by the Goddess in that scorched earth. Shayla knew perfectly well there wasn't much to be found; the ancient goddess was dead, dead, dead, and the new goddess a bare sproutling, and would be for several hundred years more.

But Anise had found…something… and whatever it was, or however she found it, it had left her changed, and hungry. The woman could not accept that the power of Mana was gone, that it could not be hers, and the world was being torn apart as it tried to keep her from destroying the growing Goddess.

Artifacts of Mana were all well and good, but their power so tenuous that they were little help against Anise. Mana was gone, but Shayla and Leroy still began to wonder if there wasn't something else to be found, something they hoped could help. And it was that search that had led them here on this day, to find something before it could be buried by dirt and time.

"Look," Shayla breathed, spotting a telltale glitter up ahead. More than that, it had a _feeling_. A feeling that drew her to it like thirst drew one to water.

She ran towards it almost mindlessly, only knowing that she wanted it, and as she reached the object of her desire, she knelt heedlessly in the dirt and plunged both hands into the stream that trickled past the base of the Tower. She did not feel the cold of the water as her hands closed around a round stone, worn smooth by the burbling of the brook; all she could think was this, this was it, a fragment of the destroyed Mana Stone.

Water dripped off her sleeves as she examined her prize. It shone with the gentle pearlescence she suspected the Mana Stones had once had, but dark clouds seemed to swirl within. That did not bother her; she did not fear Shade any more than Wisp. Nor did the chaos within the stone perturb her. She knew chaos and order were opposites, just as everything else, thought they did demand different things of a person.

The light was growing dim, and Leroy looked around uncertainly. "Shouldn't we head back?" he worried. "This forest is teeming with wolves at night."

Shayla did not bother to look up. "Those wolves are more than likely Beastmen," she replied, "but if you are still worried, I'll protect you. I want to go inside the tower."

"Princess, you should have become an Amazon when you had the chance," Leroy said behind her. Shayla was already striding through the raven-decorated gate - Leires' touch, no doubt - and she knew if Leroy had returned to teasing, he was no longer going to argue.

They climbed the convoluted corridors, devoid of life, monster or otherwise. The place put Shayla on edge, and she found herself reaching towards a mid-size hammer at her belt, wishing it was bigger, or she had a real weapon with her. But a Priestess of Wendel such as herself wasn't trained in formal military equipment; this would do in a pinch.

Eventually they had climbed - ten? eleven? - floors. There was so much backtracking that she couldn't be sure. But she knew they had arrived someplace special, when they found a grand staircase leading up to a heavy door, bronze-worked and more ornate than the rest.

"The Door of Fate," Shayla announced. "Just the sort of fancy name Leires would give it, because she doesn't want to call it The Place I Go For Alone Time."

"Shayla, I don't know if you should - " Leroy spoke up behind her. She generally appreciated her brother's concern, but at this moment, she had stopped thinking about it. The door was already opening in her right hand, her left hand clutching her precious prize. The bit of Mana Stone warmed slightly, perhaps detecting her excitement.

She stepped out into the midnight sky, and found herself on the tower's roof, blissfully alone.

All six moons were out. It was said that only in the moonlight forest would you ever see more than two at a time, and she relished the sight, from the small, cheerfully flickering moon of Gnome to the tiny delicate moon of Dryad and the large, reddish moon of Salamander that always seemed angry. Five surrounding the simple white orb that was only called the Moon.

The piece of stone begged to see what she was seeing, and smiling, Shayla raised the piece of Moon Stone to bathe it in the moonlight. The clouds within swirled, then settled to comfortably drift across the stone's surface, echoing her own emotions. Somewhere, distantly, she heard another's footsteps enter the roof behind her.

She felt it calling to her, and she embraced it in her hands, its piercing siren's song filling her ears, her brother's voice a whisper in the wind next to that melody. She pulled it to her chest as if she could absorb the last bits of Mana, the last bits of life, within.

And suddenly, with a cry of pain, she did. She screamed as he skin melted like wax from the searing heat of the stone, and she turned to see horror in Leroy's eyes, and heard his scream along with hers, a long, drawn-out wail that filled the skies above the ancient tower.

It seemed to go on forever, until the pain winked out as suddenly as it begin. Shayla fell forward, careless of skirts dragging on the dusty bricks.

Leroy knelt next to her. "I'm alright, really I am," she told her brother, reaching hand to her chest at the same time to reassure herself that she was, in fact, whole.

Her hand froze. There, just below her collarbone, nestled between and slightly above her breasts, was the black-tinged, pearlescent stone that she had been holding, secured by her own skin.

Leroy grimly whipped out a knife. "I'll take it out, Shayla, but I can't promise it won't hurt."

Her hand lightly on his arm was enough to still her brother's determination. "No, Leroy. I can feel it. It's a part of me now, the core of myself is as linked with it as it is with me."

The moons seemed to giggle at the trick that had been played on her. Shayla sat cross-legged under the night sky, fondling the black pearl, brow furrowing in concentration.


	6. Legends: Lost

**6. Legends: Lost**

Ariesa hadn't expected much from yet another routine trip into Domina.

The day was sunny and quiet, and even the dream hadn't bugged her in a while. She'd almost managed to forget it. The twins had settled into her new home quickly enough, slowly carving out space in a house that it turned out, was quite roomy enough for three, and the sounds of other voices filling that space had begun to lift her spirits. It was peaceful; perhaps a bit boring, but pleasurably so.

She was mentally running down a list of vegetables to buy when a swish of a cloak disappearing into the pub attracted her attention, head swiveling in time to see a glimpse of a vaguely familiar man before the door slammed shut behind him.

That, in and of itself, was enough to pique her curiosity. Here in Domina, a small town whose nationality was questionable, there _were_ no strangers. There was no reason for them to come here, except for - what? Produce?

Intrigued, she picked up her pace to a slight jog and followed him inside, to see the young man yelling - another thing rarely heard in Domina - at Rachel, the daughter of Mark and Jennifer.

"Nothing?! You really don't know anything?" Rachel shook her head, quivering slightly.

"What happened?" Ariesa asked from behind, and the man whirled to give her the first full glimpse of him. He looked about as young as she herself, she realized, but there was something world-weary about him as well. Bright blue eyes pierced into her brown, but although there was plenty of anger, somehow there was no cruelty. And the other thing that made people angry was... fear.

Suddenly, she remembered. The man who had been looking at her the day she met Bud and Lisa, his gaze as penetrating as she remembered from that day. What was _he_ still doing here?

She wasn't intimidated, exactly, but Ariesa felt disconcerted nevertheless. She had only seen him the one time, but something... resonated. Like she knew everything about him. The thought gave her a little backbone.

Ariesa forced herself to stand straight, her lithe elven body looking all the more slender as she raised her posture to meet the eyes of the newcomer. Rachel looked questioningly back and forth at the two, wings fluttering nervously as she saw her friend face off with the stranger who had just confronted her.

"I'm looking for… a friend…" He seemed to droop slightly.

She flashed back to Jennifer telling her about the man striding through town, filled with rage and frustration, looking for someone. Had he been here all this time without finding her? "Well, Rachel's just the waitress here. She probably doesn't know anything. Tell me about her instead," Ariesa intervened soothingly.

The young man softened somewhat at her tone. "She's several inches shorter than you, wearing a white dress... she spaces out and gets lost all the time... She's like a sister to me."

With him settled down, she took a moment to look him over, and observe. He was tallish, and his coloring spoke of northern origins. Ariesa's mother had been a trader, and with an appraising eye, she took in his garments. Oddly, they were southern, and not inexpensive, either. His mail tunic was blackened iron, but woven through with the Lorant silver that was more pure, more malleable, and much more rare than its Wendelic counterpart. Over it he wore a mantle of the unique silk made only in the desert city of Sultan; luxuriously soft, but surprisingly durable, and nicely protective from heat.

Ariesa wondered where he was from, and what long road he had traveled to find himself in Domina. "Let me help you find her," she burst out spontaneously.

The man blinked like she had suggested flying to the moon. Any one of the six of them. "You want to help? You mustn't... you shouldn't..."

"But I _will_," Ariesa replied. And as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew they were true.

He looked back at the young woman's strong determination. "I... I would be grateful," he finally replied. "I saw you, you know, the day with the pumpkins... You're something of a warrior yourself, eh? My name is Elazul."

Ariesa remembered the way he had regarded her that day, and uncomfortably chose not to mention it. "Why did you think she might be here anyway?" she asked, changing the subject.

"I felt... something in the stones..." His voice faltered off, unable or unwilling to explain more.

Ariesa had not noticed that Rachel had fluttered behind her, understandably spooked by the whole scenario. "The stones?" she asked hesitantly, peeking out from behind Ariesa's back. "You mean... like this one?"

Elazul and Ariesa gasped as one at the stone Rachel pulled from her pouch, a green, pearlescent thing. Its beauty drew Ariesa, something of the past and future all rolled into one… Where had the girl gotten a stone like _that_?

"I found it," she told the two. "Just outside the Mekiv Caverns."

Elazul took it from her gently, almost reverently. "And stones can tell us so much," he murmured, half to himself. "It's not her... but it's as if it knows where she is."

"How can you tell?" It drew her, but it would not speak to her. Ariesa reached a second for it, then snatched her hand back.

"There's Mana in it that... well, I can read it well enough. Maybe you too." Elazul had not taken his eyes off it, but now, he handed it to her gently.

Ariesa took the proffered item, it comfortably fitting in her cupped palms. She tried to see what Elazul obviously could, but just as with the flute, there was... nothing. "No good," she proclaimed. _You would think a sprite could sense Mana, _she thought to herself_, but no such luck._

"Well, then you'll just have to trust me on this," Elazul replied, hand reaching near his throat in what seemed an automatic gesture, but he pulled it away before touching. Ariesa wondered why, but she was used to brushing off the surprising when necessary.

"Then the Mekiv Caverns?" Ariesa inquired. "It's easy enough to take you there."

--

They entered the noonday sun into the damp coolness of the Mekiv Caverns, a sculpted structure created by eons of water dripping into the earth, the same water that now dripped sporadically off the ceiling, its splashes echoing in Ariesa's head as she glanced at her newfound partner.

Elazul's expression was contorted into a mixture of hope, pain, rage, and frustration, a mess of emotions that made Ariesa feel sane in her simple determination. "I sense brilliance nearby! It must be Pearl!"

"Brilliance?" Ariesa inquired, but Elazul was already off and running, leaving her no choice but to tear after him or risk losing him in the underground maze.

Mekiv was… something else. It was said the caverns themselves were alive. The walls glowed with a soft green bioluminescence; Ariesa did not need to be told this was someplace special. She had not been here many times, but she had always loved it.

But like many places in the world nowadays, it was infested with monsters.

Elazul was stopped up short at the first group of monsters, and Ariesa caught up to him in time to slice her sword through a bloodsucking bat. It shrieked at the sudden loss of a wing, falling to splatter on the ground. A deft poke finished the thing.

Elazul, meanwhile, had sent a couple goblins skittering back to whatever shadows they had crawled out of. He glared at them as they squealed away. "Is it like this all the way down?"

"Sometimes," Ariesa replied. "Can you handle it?"

His look was slightly withering. "An irritation, nothing more." He swung his sword for emphasis. She stared suddenly in shock at a detail she couldn't believe she had missed before; the arm wielding that sword was smooth, like crystal or polished stone.

"Can you?" he asked her.

She spared herself the male posturing. "I know how to use this better than you," she said, patting the sword's handle comfortably.

He seemed a little taken aback at her response, but recovered quickly enough. "So, no problem," Elazul said. "Let's go."

"Wait!" she called. "Do you know where you're going?"

He turned, and there it was, a flash of fear from someone who only barely controlled his expressions. "Well enough," he replied.

And that was all he had to say, leaving Ariesa feeling - possibly a little miffed, as she stared at his sand-beige cape swishing with every move. Arrogant, and self-absorbed, she thought as her feet followed mechanically. Also, afraid, and determined.

Maybe he wasn't all that much unlike her.

--

The monsters on the way down were mere child's play, and left Ariesa craving a real fight. She scornfully sliced them away, Elazul paying no more attention as well, and together, they barely broke a sweat.

It left them a bit of time for talking.

He watched somewhat impassively as she discarded the remnants of yet another group of monsters. "Not bad," he admitted grudgingly.

"It's what I do," she replied, a bit flippant.

Elazul smirked a bit. Not smarmy, exactly, but he did. "So, you're a knight or something, are you?"

"Something like that," Ariesa replied warily. There was something in his tone… calculating… that set her on edge.

He put his hand to his chin thoughtfully as they walked. "So, how far have you been from here?"

It was an odd question, she thought. "I've been all over the lake area. To Wendel, and Polpota nearby, and east to Luon, at the end of the highway."

Elazul only sighed, in a way that could mean anything. "So, still a small-town girl."

That put Ariesa's back up. "And how far have _you_ been?"

"Everywhere," Elazul replied simply.

"And that's why you can put me down?"

Elazul seemed surprised at her sudden angry response. "No," he replied carefully. "If you want to know the truth… I'm actually a little jealous."

She softened a bit. "Why?"

"Because…" he began, then paused. "Because, being everywhere means you don't really have a home. Just you and the world, all alone."

"Alone?"

"I always end up alone," Elazul told her.

"But what do you mean? We're looking for…Pearl, you said? She's your…"

Ariesa left the question open, and Elazul chose not to answer. _He has some deep feelings for this woman_, she thought to herself.

After a moment, though, he spoke. "That's right, just us two, alone together. We can't rely on anyone else."

Ariesa had an insight. "You don't trust me," she told him flatly.

Again, he did not answer, turning his head to regard the jade walls from floor to ceiling. She chose not to be offended; it seemed that was merely the nature of Elazul. Together, they progressed in now-awkward silence.

"Why are these caverns green?" Elazul finally broke in.

"Mana," she told him. "I thought you could sense it."

"I can," he replied, "but from where?"

"They say it's from a Mana Stone that used to lie up above," she answered, waving one hand generally upward. "It seeped first into a waterfall above, and as the water carved the caverns, Mana seeped into the rocks themselves."

"You love it here, don't you?" he said with surprising softness.

"It feels like creation to me," she told him. "It feels like hope." She felt breathed in the air; damp, yes, but not dank like many other caves, soothing like river spray.

Elazul paused and looked around momentarily. "Hope," he told her. "Maybe it could give me some of that."

Ariesa instinctively reached out an arm to comfort him, but he had already resumed his rapid stride deeper into the caverns.

Downward they traveled, daylight a distant memory as the dimmer greenish light of Mekiv itself took over. Ariesa was forced to take Elazul's word that he knew where they were going, trying to mentally map the place so they could eventually find their way out. Suddenly, she practically ran into her companion, who had stopped at a dead halt.

"Wha -" she began, but let the sentence trail off as she realized they were not alone.

For a split second, she thought they might have found their quarry, but her mind quickly assessed that all was not well. Elazul was as wound up as a tight rubber band. And the woman before them certainly did not seem anything like Elazul had described his friend.

She was tall, taller than even Ariesa, and stood with a casual arrogance that Ariesa would have found it hard to emulate. Red hairs was twirled tight, above a deceptively constricting green dress; as the other woman shifted her weight from one foot to the other, Ariesa noted the dress stretched and moved with her effortlessly. Her boots were heeled, but solidly so; she could probably run in them without difficulty. Her entire appearance seemed construed to confuse.

She looked at Elazul with something approaching recognition. "You sure are late. Pearl is this way. Some knight. Huh."

"How did you know Pearl's name?" Elazul asked warily.

"Huh?" Ariesa let out, but neither of the others present took notice.

The redhead laughed. "Kid," she said mockingly, "you have no idea what I know and you don't." Then she swept a glance towards Ariesa, who flinched involuntarily. She had always been good at reading people's eyes, and there was mad fanaticism in these. "You're not one of _them_. Best be careful, before you turn to stone."

"One of _who_? Turn to stone? What?" Ariesa's tirade of questions was interrupted by a high-pitched feminine voice from the cavern beyond. _"Elazul?"_ it cried.

Elazul was suddenly off and running, but as Ariesa followed him through the entry into the next cavern, she heard the mystery woman behind her. "Not so fast," she said scornfully. Ariesa turned, sword at the ready.

The other woman snapped her fingers, and a grotesque beast appeared, covered in rocky armor and long neck ending in a single glowing eyeball. "Jewel beasts," the woman said in satisfaction. "They show up every thousand years or so. Fairly convenient, and rather fond of jewels." She grinned evilly, and Ariesa turned to see Elazul's involuntary flinch.

The beast roared at the interruption, the sound rattling the delicate walls of the caverns.

"Well, Ariesa," Elazul turned to her, "you had better be as good as you say."

"I am," she bragged, then dove in before her confidence could falter.

The first swing of her sword, and she slipped out of her head and into her body. She felt her leg bend as she dove to strike, and her arm flex as the sword swung through the air. It hit rocky armor with a _clang_, sending vibrations up her arm, but she did not notice; when she was engrossed in the movement of her own body that way, she felt utterly, completely _alive_.

The beast was not only big, it was stupid and slow, for which she was grateful every time she had to dodge a blow or a kick from those monstrous limbs. She neatly dove away to slice a vein, a hamstring, whatever vulnerable spot she could reach in the chinks of its armor.

Elazul faced it dead on, but as she watched him dance with the sword, with that strangely stone-like right arm, she realized he knew just what he was doing. He feinted, parried, and lured the thing towards him, the neck diving towards him with odd, snapping jaws, and at the last second plunged the sword into its single eye.

The roar of pain was thunderous, but Ariesa ran away before the massive corpse could smash her, seeing Elazul fleeing the same direction. Rocks rained down from the ceiling, and her heart stopped wondering if they would crash down on her. Elazul threw one arm around her with what seemed to be an automatic protective instinct; and then all was still.

Ariesa turned to see Elazul hunched slightly, breathing hard. It wasn't every day one had to fight a monstrous beast. He looked up, and then, she saw... a smile. "Now that's how you fight a monster," he said, grinning.

"Elazul? Is that you?" The plaintive cry straightened him quick enough.

"Pearl!" he cried, as a small young woman tried to extract herself from a crack in the rocks even she must have strained to squeeze into.

Elazul was there in a moment, and with a tenderness that surprised Ariesa, he offered one hand to Pearl. His other, that strangely crystalline hand, slipped behind her back, and he helped her along as she wiggled slightly, trying to free herself. Suddenly, she slipped out, throwing herself around the taller man with a smile. She was a small, palely beautiful young thing, silver-gold hair looping around a delicate face and powder blue-grey eyes.

"Elazul… I was so scared… that woman chased me down here, I thought she was after my core…"

"Where did she go?" wondered Ariesa.

"I saw her run away when that thing died…"

"She could have attacked you easily herself," Elazul said grimly. "She was waiting for us both to be here, otherwise you'd be gone now! I told you not to go wandering by yourself! Why did you even _think_ to come here?!" Elazul demanded angrily, all the gruff edge that Ariesa had seen in the pub returning.

Pearl extracted herself from the embrace. The young woman did, indeed, respond like a chastened younger sister. "I'm sorry... I was just thinking about things..."

"You don't need to think anymore, just stay safe by my side."

"That's harsh!" Ariesa butted in. Elazul turned to her with the piercing glare she had first seen on him.

"Stay out of it," he told her. Returning to Pearl, he told her, "We are so easily hurt... you cannot be too careful." His tone became almost pleading. "Pearl, I would go crazy if anything happened to you."

"I'm fine, really!" the girl protested. "No scratches or cracks or anything! Who it this, anyway?""

Elazul was finally forced to acknowledge her. "Just someone who helped me find you."

"Named _Ariesa_," the "someone" added. "Who are you, anyway?"

The two were lost in their personal conversation, and Ariesa was left to watch, considering. "How did you find me all the way down here?" Pearl inquired.

"The rocks told me." Elazul handed the jade egg to Pearl, who took it from him gently, it seeming much bigger in her tiny hands.

"The rocks..." Pearl seemed almost to be listening, but strangely she held to her chest, not her ears. Her eyes closed momentarily, and she took in a deep sigh, the rock seeming to glow softly in response, before she reopened her eyes dreamily. "It's very faint... I'm surprised you were even able to tell, Elazul. The resonance was that strong? That's really unusual."

He turned abruptly. "I don't know what it _does_, I just knew it told me where to find you."

Ariesa started suddenly. In that quick motion, she had seen... a flash of sparkle as the collar of Elazul's shirt shifted. And what she had seen was no necklace. Recovering herself, she followed her hunch and let her eyes travel surreptitiously to Pearl. It was fainter, pale, but there was something near her collarbone as well. She ran her hands through her hair instinctively, trying to figure out what it was... something that jogged her memory...

"We're going," Elazul interrupted her train of thought. It was right on the edge of her mind, but... "I'm grateful for your help, but you really should stay away. Pearl and I, we are all alone in this world."

"Elazul," Pearl spoke soothingly, "it's okay, I won't leave you, ever..." She had the tone of someone used to calming others.

"Then let's go." With no further ado, Elazul turned to leave.

Pearl paused before following, then stepped hesitantly towards Ariesa. "Thank you... for everything. I think… I hope to see you again." Her eyes seemed a little dreamy, but somewhere, in there, Ariesa could see... wisdom, that perhaps was hidden underneath.

Ariesa nodded, taking the girl's hand in hers to clasp it soothingly. "I'd like that." There was a brief flutter of some expression that she could not identify across Pearl's face, before it settled into a gentle smile.

"_Pearl!"_ Elazul's voice was heard from the far end of the cavern.

"Eek!" Pearl turned and scurried away, leaving Ariesa alone with only the sound of dripping water to echo her own thoughts. Her head throbbed.

Suddenly exhausted, Ariesa plopped herself on one of the fallen rocks, and let the feeling of Mekiv wash over her. Minutes passed.

_Lost_. Pearl certainly was, if anyone she had ever seen was. And quite possibly Elazul as well, if she read him right. But then again, wasn't she a little lost in the world as well?

Slowly, the negative thoughts ebbed away, until her head felt clear once again. She pulled herself to her feet and retrieved her weapon, to find her way back home.

--

"Dinner!" Bud called, but got no response. "Where is she?"

Lisa sighed, putting down the handful of forks and knives she was holding on the table. "She's in the library. Probably lost all track of time. I'll get her."

The elven girl entered the library to a scene of chaos. Books were stacked everywhere, opened haphazardly only to be abandoned with no apparent pattern. In the middle of it all sat Ariesa, flipping furiously through the pages of the volume open in front of her.

"What are you doing?" Lisa inquired. Ariesa raised her brown eyes, briefly uncomprehending, having been utterly absorbed in her work.

"I'm trying to remember," she mumbled. "Those two... something about the stones... it's in here somewhere..."

"What happened today?" Lisa asked, concerned. "Tell me, I might know something."

Ariesa sighed, exasperated. "Well, I don't know what it will all mean to you, but..." And slowly but surely, the tale unfolded, the young man looking for a young woman, strangely cognizant of her whereabouts, all the way down to the jewels glittering just below their necks...

Lisa started, as she suddenly put it all together. "_Jumi_?"

"That's it!" Ariesa shrieked, jumping up to pull another volume from the shelves. "Jumi!" She opened the new book on a corner of the desk, and Lisa pulled up a chair to look on with her.

"I knew I'd seen it somewhere," continued Ariesa, flipping to the desired passage with satisfaction, "but there's not much written about them. Jewels a part of themselves, but no one knows how or where they came from. Mysterious and misunderstood powers once sought, and tears of healing, just like you guys were telling me."

"And nearly impossible to find," Lisa noted. "Well, it looks like there's at least two in Domina. From what you've told me, he's the knight and she's the guardian."

"The what?" Ariesa turned to her. "How do you know?"

"I was reading my books at the Academy of Magic while Bud was blowing stuff up," Lisa replied proudly. "Jumi always travel in pairs, a knight and a guardian."

"Like, husband and wife?" Ariesa asked, now focused. It made Lisa a little nervous.

"Not at all… I don't think it's against the rules or anything, but the way I understand it, that's sort of beside the point. I'm not sure what they do when they get married." Lisa giggled slightly at the sudden girl talk. "But the knight's job is to protect the guardian, with his or her life if necessary."

"So…" Ariesa said thoughtfully. "Pearl's not his lover at all. I guess that makes more sense, otherwise I'd think he was just being a big jerk to her."

Lisa nodded. "The guardian... should be the one with the power, but it's not really clear anymore what powers they have. They've kind of been in hiding. I'm surprised they're even here. I wonder what pulled them here."

"Or what they're running away from," Ariesa mused. "Academy of Magic, huh? The one in Geo? You didn't tell me about that part. You'll have to tell me all about it over dinner." Hopping up from her chair, she motioned Lisa to follow.


	7. Secrets: Empire

**Author's note: **There's quite a bastion of new characters being introduced over the next handful of chapters (I think it slows down in chapter twelve), and many of them will be showing up again... So, a lot to keep track of, but I know my readership and reviewership is an intelligent bunch, so you guys are up for the challenge, right?

--

**7. Secrets: Empire**

Heath silently observed his daughter, leaned over the books as she was.

Leires was striking. She had inherited Heath's pale skin, which came from his own namesake father, but the black hair of her mother, Aeris, unusual even among the elves. Heath had braved controversy to take an elven wife, some years back, though it was now common.

Aeris was off, somewhere, by Maia this time, he thought. It was one of those elf things; she would always come home, but she could never sit still. His mother, Carlie, was much the same, and that's why he was High Priest now, even though her influence still surpassed his.

Leires was sometimes called "the elven princess," great-granddaughter of the last true elven princess, Shayla, for whom Heath's half-sister was named. She was sought by many, but endlessly turned away suitors, comfortably returning to her studies of… anything and everything of Mana she could get her hands on. She had that odd sort of intelligence that thought about things no one else thought about, and her studies at the University of Pedan had sharpened her mind ever further.

"Listen to this, father," she said, looking up with a cheerful, girlish smile of which he was generally the only recipient. "Dryad represents the tree, Mana, life itself; she is the place where everything _is_. Luna, the moon, is nothingness, the void, the place from which all _begins_." She shut the book and crossed her hands over it.

"Caw," spoke one of her ravens from its cage. It was her favorite bird, and a half-dozen kept her company in her study.

Leires was... controversial. A hundred years ago, there would have been an outlet for her darker leanings; she had been meant to be an enchantress, if anyone in Wendel ever was. But now, her interests were considered occult, and somewhat in disfavor. Heath knew she would never be happy in Wendel; they would never accept her as the next High Priestess. Though she was his first offspring, he was already planning for his son to take over for him. But she was still his child, and he loved her just the same. "What does it all mean, daughter?"

"Just this." She raised one finger and adopted that vaguely lecturing tone. "The tree is gone. What we have left is the emptiness, and something new is meant to come to fill its place."

Heath looked forward, interested. "And how do we do that?" he told her. "You have elven blood, the powers of Dryad should be with you, but you say it's not so. What do you want out of it?"

Leires looked out the window, west, he thought, with a faraway look. "I don't know," she replied. "But so much has changed, and I fear that the right choices won't be made to fill its place."

She fingered her book absently, and he knew she was quoting from it. "This is a book from the Beast Kingdom, father. They know Luna better than anyone." She flipped it open to a page that was so dog-eared, she barely needed to glance at it. " 'In the night, we all become different, yet the same…. To the void we return, and emerge into life once again.' There is a new beginning coming, father. Death, and life, part of the cycle, even for the Goddess herself. And I wonder what kind of beginning there will be for the new Goddess."

"That sounds like something your grandmother would say."

Leires' look became intense. "Carlie met the ancient Goddess _Herself_, father. She knows better than anyone what we hope and pray for. I merely choose to examine things differently."

--

Loki could only sigh as he looked out on the battlefield.

_When had it come to this?_ In the absence of Mana, was humanity doomed to fight each other for whatever power they could? Thankfully, no one had yet found a way to use the piddling shreds of Mana that remained. He remembered Valda telling him that the occasional artifact was barely more than a memory of Mana, but if that knowledge was discovered, he didn't think that would stop many. He had lived many years, plenty of time to see the greedy side of human nature.

He wished there was someone left to turn to. His father, his mother, his sister Angela. His brother-in-law Duran, who once would have been a member of the forces that the eighty-year-old King of Forcena now looked down upon.

Most of all, he wished Kevin was still with them. The half-human Beast King had done wonders to improve Beastman-human relations; even intermarriage was not the taboo it once had been.

But that all had collapsed, in the years after the Goddess died, the hope Angela had carried fading away in the new world. As if adjusting to life without Mana was not enough, still things changed that they could not control. Navarre had found a way to balance its environment and survive the blistering heat, but Altena grew colder still, and with all the climate disruption, the shape of the land changed as well, bridges of land appearing where nothing had been before.

Carlie was living in Lumina, now; he had promised the High Priestess to protect Wendel with the ever-growing military power of his own country. Her son Heath was a good enough High Priest, but Wendel was the City of the Goddess, and it never did have a proper sort of defense. It had only survived through the old High Priest's use of Mana when the Beastmen had attacked eighty-five years ago, searching for the Mana Stone that was now shattered. They had even less security now, as the Beastmen attacked again, trying to carve new territory wherever they could.

And that was why he had brought the forces of Forcena. When had his country become the protector of the world? That part was fine, actually – it was the duty of the Forcenan Knights to protect - but it also meant the Forcenan influence was spreading. Was the country ready for the role it was being given?

Especially considering the terms of today's surrender. The Beast Kingdom, barely a hundred years old, would be aligned with Forcena as a protectorate; but that was all fancy language for what he knew would happen. Forcena was taking it over, enveloping it into the fold; it might take time to truly assimilate it, but the independence of Ferolia was over.

He pulled on the rest of his ceremonial armor, and reluctantly made his way to the courtyard outside the Temple of Light, his joints aching with the pains of age.

The Wendelic were already there, and their elven allies. The elves had intermarried with the Altenans as his mother's country suffered; but they were part of this new world too, and now they came south to mix with the other nations of the world as well. Pessimistically, he wondered if Diorre, too, would probably be another territory of Forcena when all was said and done.

Heath was there, of course, and his wife and daughter. Leires wore pure white, a contrast to her raven-black hair that blended into her pale skin, as if the eyes of half the crowd were not drawn to her beauty already.

The defeated Beast King, Kevin's grandson, was still defiant. In human form, he was in fact, a nice-looking man, Loki thought objectively. Finely muscled, not too stocky as many of the Beastmen were, and features that combined the strong chin and red-gold hair of the Beastmen with softer eyes and nose showing his human roots. Loki approached him slowly, but before he could get a word out of his mouth, he was greeted with anger.

"How do I know you will honor our agreement?" Yurian snarled.

Loki was a little taken aback. "The same way all agreements are honored. Gifts, titles, perhaps a marriage to seal the deal..."

"Marriage." Yurian contemplated that, wolfish temper settling down. "A beautiful wife for me? You have someone in mind?"

"Well... not yet," Loki replied, apologetically. "But I'm sure there are a number of suitable ladies I could arrange for you to meet."

"I'm sure there are," the Beast King mused. "How about... that one?"

Loki followed where he pointed, and groaned. Yurian pointed... straight at Leires.

The black-haired dark priestess was icier than any Altenan woman ever had been. His sister Angela included. Men had been trying to get her attention for years, to no avail. Leires, for her part, barely raised an eyebrow to acknowledge the gesture, her expression shadowed and unreadable as always, in that way that only seemed to make her more beautiful.

"Leires?" Loki asked, wondering what Heath thought of all this. "She is the only daughter of Wendel's High Priest. Perhaps this is not the best match?"

"Silence, Forcenan. I will ask her myself." Yurian strode over to the expressionless Leires, then, much to Loki's surprise, fell to one knee. "Wendelic princess, I ask you to become my queen."

The raven-haired lady took the proffered hand. "I accept," she replied nonchalantly, as if this was a question she answered every day. Murmurs spread through the crowd. "And from now on, you may address me by name. I am Leires."

Yurian grabbed her to kiss her roughly. And she didn't fight him at all. He let her go, and her cool demeanor did not break even at _that_.

Loki wandered over to finally meet Heath's eyes, a pang of guilt for what he had wrought. He was the King; everything that concerned Forcena was his responsibility.

Heath, however, seemed rather nonplussed. "Well," the High Priest greeted him. "I suppose my daughter is getting married. We should be celebrating."

"Yes," Loki replied, the thoughts milling through his head. One more nail pinning the country to Forcena.

_Forcena was becoming an Empire_, Loki thought. It had never been his dream, yet it made itself a reality. Forcena, with all its mining and weapons, thriving as the other kingdoms started to fade.

He felt a twinge of pain. _Was this the new world Angela and her companions had fought for? How far had they really come? When the goddess had died, what else had died with her?_

"Your Majesty!" cried one of Loki's soldiers.

His heart hurt. _Mana. The Goddess._ So much this world had once had, to leave it at peace. Or was that just his impression? Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that if the Goddess would return, maybe everything would be right again. But that would be no time soon.

"Quick! Get help!" The cry was distant to him.

The Goddess. His heart pained with the thought. His knees grew weak under him. Valda had told him even as a little boy, that someday she would return. When she returned, would anyone remember? What would the world be that she would wake up to? Hands were grabbing him, helping him onto a litter, but all he could feel was the hurt in his heart.

_One can only hope that she will save us all_, he thought, and that was the last thought before his heart gave out.


	8. Legends: Dreams

**8. Legends: Dreams**

_Jumi. Jewels._ They filled her mind for the next few days.

Ariesa had stopped in the pub for a bite to eat, taking a table near the back; she could look out the window, but was shielded from the direct noonday sun. Bud and Lisa were still tearing around the marketplace with the energy of teenagers, promising they would finish up the rest of the shopping. Not that she wasn't young herself, but still, she enjoyed a few minutes to herself, especially now that her house was a bit more crowded.

"Hey," interrupted a voice behind her. She set down her fork, and turned away from the window to see Elazul behind her chair. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Pearl a trailing a few feet behind him, stopping to peruse the pictures on the walls.

"Oh, hi," she replied averting her gaze uncomfortably. That piercing look of his bothered her a little, and part of it was, she knew he wasn't so... impressed... with her. She was a competent fighter, but he was sworn to protect someone to the death, and it suddenly made her feel very girlish.

He pulled up a chair, and waited patiently for her to meet his eyes again before clearing his throat uncomfortably. "I'm s -" he paused. "That is, I shouldn't have been so abrupt with you. We - " he jerked his head towards Pearl, now apparently ordering something at the bar - "are grateful for your help."

Pearl glanced over at them, and a small smile crossed her face. Ariesa wondered if she had something to do with Elazul's apology. It wouldn't have surprised her.

Ariesa hung her head down slightly towards the table, pondering. A number of responses occurred to her. _It's okay. You were worried about Pearl. Yeah, you were kind of a jerk. There was a lot going on around us._ But none was the one that sprung to her lips. "I know you're Jumi," she whispered, her head still tilted forward but her eyes lifted to judge the response.

For the first time she saw it. Real fear, no anger hiding it this time, as his muscles suddenly tensed. Pearl, who had reached their table with beverages, had heard as well, and looked at Ariesa with a mix of surprise and worry before sitting down.

Elazul leaned in closer, and Pearl - unconsciously, she thought - inched her chair closer to her knight. "That's dangerous to say," he whispered back.

"But why?" Ariesa asked, maintaining their secretive tone despite there being no one else in the restaurant, Rachel having gone to the back somewhere. She was glad she had taken a table against the far wall.

"She should know, Elazul," Pearl interjected. "She _helped _us, remember?"

Elazul sighed. "Pearl… I guess you're right. Well," he began, returning his attention to Ariesa, "if you know about Jumi, you must know that we were once hunted for our cores... Um, you know, our jewels?" he said, motioning to collarbone.

"Sort of," she admitted. As it turned out, Lisa knew much more than the books in her library, and that still wasn't much.

"We were. It's why you see so few of us around. We're hoping to find some others, alive or dead, while making sure we stay alive ourselves." Elazul's tone was grim. "There's not much else left for us, or the Jumi as a whole."

"Dead?" Ariesa covered her shock. "What good does that do you?"

"Because," Pearl interrupted, "our lives are in here." She tugged at the laces of her bodice slightly to reveal what Ariesa had only seen glimmering before. There it was, a pearl of pure white, smaller than a fist but so smoothly integrated with her skin that Ariesa couldn't exactly explain where the boundary was. Or if there was one. "If we can find the cores, they can be brought back. Jumi live as long as their cores are not destroyed."

"Or at least, we hope they can be brought back…" Elazul trailed off, and Pearl looked suddenly very sad. Ariesa's eyes flickered between the two, her expression asking for answers, and Elazul and Pearl traded a glance she could not hope to interpret.

Elazul was the one who spoke first. "It takes the tears of another Jumi," he said. _Tears of healing_, Ariesa remembered Lisa saying. "No ordinary tears, but tears that come from the core, tears that are shards of life."

"The tears of a guardian, a Jumi who is a guadian of Mana," Pearl said quietly. "But ages ago, the Jumi lost their ability to cry. Now, healing those Jumi is nothing but an impossible dream."

Elazul turned to her, laying one hand on Pearl's shoulder to comfort her. Ariesa gazed in fascination, wanting to ask more but figuring they would let her know as much as they were willing. "How do you find them?"

"We hear rumors," Elazul replied. "Jumi, or their cores, are rare enough nowadays that they start all kinds of gossip; and if we get close enough, we can… sense… others." He took a sip of whatever beverage Pearl had brought him. "There's supposed to be one in Gato, one in Polpota. I think we're going to Gato next."

"You're leaving?" Ariesa started, not quite sure why she was suddenly upset. She barely knew the two, but... to think of them out there, lost, marooned... it bothered her in a way she couldn't say.

It was the way she sometimes felt herself.

"Yes…" Elazul trailed off. "I think… we're being hunted. Again. I'm not sure how or why…"

"That woman?" Ariesa interjected.

"Possibly," he said thoughtfully. "I'm not entirely sure. There was… something… about her that I couldn't quite explain, something I couldn't quite place… It bugs me, like there's something important I'm missing." Pearl nodded agreement.

Slightly squealing voices were heard outside the door, and a moment later her two apprentices came tearing in, as full of energy as ever even laden with shopping bags. They came running up to the table, Lisa confident and Bud suddenly gaping at Elazul and Pearl. Ariesa made hurried introductions all around.

Taking that as his cue, Elazul stepped from the table, Pearl following his lead. "We should go," he said simply.

"It was nice to see you, and thank you again," Pearl replied, throwing her arms around Ariesa in a spontaneous hug. Ariesa felt the warm thrum of her core, as alive as a heart, before she, too, turned to leave, sparing a moment to greet the twins, both of whose eyes followed the ethereal pale girl to the door. A slam of a door, and they were gone.

"Those were them, huh?" Lisa said. The girl was becoming more like a younger sister since the day they had talked in the library. Was that barely a week ago?

Her brother looked at her quizzically. "Huh?" Bud asked.

"Jumi, Bud. You never listen to anything," Lisa sighed.

"Well, Pearl was pretty, whatever she was," Bud replied.

Briefly, Ariesa sketched out the conversation they had missed. The twins' looks grew serious. "Sounds rough," Bud said.

"It makes me want to… help them. To do _something_," Ariesa replied, though she wondered about the purity of her motivations. She had kind of latched onto this, and she couldn't seem to shake it. Was it simple boredom? Did it matter?

"Well, if they are going to Gato... why don't we go to Polpota?" suggested Lisa.

Ariesa looked at them wryly. "It's not so far, just south of Wendel, but… you sure this isn't an attempt to get me to take you to a resort town?"

"Is that a problem?" Lisa replied meekly, fluttering her lashes.

--

Ariesa hadn't been to Polpota since she had been a little girl, and that was longer ago than she could remember most days. But it was just like it was like in those trickles of memories - warm wind, blue sky reflecting against the sea.

What she hadn't remembered from childhood was the exorbitant prices.

"Ouch," she declared in the lobby of the extravagant Polpota hotel, shelling out a not-insubstantial pile of Lucre coins for their room.

"Didn't you tell us your parents left you plenty of money?" Lisa asked.

"My mother, and that doesn't mean she never taught me what it was worth," Ariesa replied. "I'm going to go check out the hotel lounge and buy a completely overpriced meal. How about the two of you?"

"We're going exploring," replied Bud, Lisa nodding her agreement.

"Have fun," Ariesa wished them well, and smiling, turned to the hotel lounge. Her smile started to fall as she remembered the reason they had come here in the first place.

--

Bud had left his sister behind long ago. That was fine, she was used to it, and seemed perfectly content perusing the shops of the waterfront mall. _What a girl_.

He passed the entry to the beach, and headed off in the opposite direction, scrambling up the steep rocky promontory that overlooked the brilliant turquoise waters of Polpota harbor. Sparkling, like he thought a Jumi's core would be. The sight caused him to pause for a moment, tugging at his too-big wizard's robe from where it had caught between the rocks, and it was then that he heard voices.

"Yes sir," began the one, the response unintelligible. Bud craned his neck around the rocks to see, but all he could see was the squat figure of a soldier. In the armor of the Empire.

"It's been ten days, Thoma," announced the second voice, dry as dust but now audible to his ears. "You have found nothing? The imperial ship sank, and most of the crew with it, including myself... We cannot report back without _something_ to compensate."

"Forgive me, captain," the short soldier replied, voice young and tremulous.

"There is no forgiveness from the emperor, and less so from the bone dragon. He does not issue commands of this importance lightly. Find why the mission failed, and then find what our lord was looking for."

Bud's curiosity got the better of him, and he peeked up to see who the soldier - Thoma? - was talking to. The sight almost caused him to drop back into hiding.

Before Thoma stood a tall, skeletal figure, the bony ribs covered in an armor not unlike Thoma's, but more gilded, the face thankfully covered by a full facial helm. Bud shuddered to think what might be underneath.

The figure stretched out one dead finger to... rip... a hole in the air, and stepping through, was gone.

--

Lisa breathed in the salty air, so much more refreshing than the heavy heat that often hung around Domina. In her arms were bundles of flowers and fruit, and she was rapidly making friends with the shopkeepers.

Even if they kept blabbing about ghosts.

Lisa didn't believe in ghosts. She should _be_ so lucky. If that were true, she might have a chance to meet her parents once again, but she had long since accepted, for better or for worse, that she and Bud were on their own, now.

And they did fine. They had gotten very lucky, meeting Ariesa, the first person who had shown them real kindness in a long time. Lisa was determined to pay her back in loyalty.

Such were her thoughts as she wandered the stalls, slowly growing bored and looking for a bit of time to herself. She wandered slightly away to the rocky edge of the ocean here, and let her feet dangle over, removing her shoes to let her toes dip into the water. She leaned back, letting the sun wash over her. Weariness slowly overtook her, and a sense of peace.

"_Aaack_!" she cried as water suddenly sloshed over her. She sat blot upright, purple hair now dripping into her eyes with stinging seawater.

"Sorry," she heard a voice, rubbing her eyes to bring vision back. "But this is the rock I always sun on, and you've been asleep here for an hour. I ran out of patience."

Lisa finally blinked the salt out of her eyes to see a mermaid sharing space with her, seaweed wound through her red hair. "I'm Flameshe, by the way."

"Lisa," replied Lisa, shaking off the nap-grogginess along with the sodden mess that now was her hair.

"What are you doing here? You don't look like you have the kind of money that most folks do who come here. You're probably just a bit younger than me."

"My teacher brought us. Me and my brother, that is. I've been out shopping," she hastily added, not willing to let the conversation turn to Jumi or other uncomfortable topics.

Flameshe leaned back on her elbows, tail flapping lightly in time with the waves beating on the rocks. "Shopping. Huh. Bet the shopkeepers have been blabbing all the time about the ghost?"

"I don't believe in ghosts," Lisa replied defensively.

"Well, good. Neither do I. It's all someone playing a trick." Flameshe looked over at Lisa's bundles. "Want to share some of those springanas? I'll trade you for this chunk of coral I found."

"Done," Lisa agreed, leaning back to enjoy time with a new friend.

--

Early afternoon was not the happening time for the hotel bar, and frankly, that suited Ariesa just fine. It left her all alone in the bar, with only the bartender for company.

And she had plenty to say.

"Everyone's so worried about some ghost." Revanshe was busily stocking glassware for the evening, her slender body swaying as if she was dancing even doing such a simple chore. She was the lounge's dancer at night, she had told Ariesa, but unless someone insanely rich came in to tip her, the bartending gig before paid the bulk of her bills in overpriced Polpota. "I think the jewel hunter is a bigger worry."

"Jewel hunter?" Ariesa didn't like the sound of that.

Revanshe nodded. "The rumor is the jewel hunter is out to take the Blue Eye." Ariesa only looked at her, puzzled. "You really are new here, aren't you? The Blue Eye is a very famous sapphire that gets passed around by the richest in town. It's like a game, they bet to own it for a little bit, just for the chance to have the core of a Jumi."

Ariesa's stomach dropped at that. So it was true. A dead Jumi, just as Elazul and Pearl had said. "How did it happen?"

Revanshe put down the wine glass she was polishing, and leaned on the bar, intent now. "The story is sometimes called 'Drowned Dreams'." It must have been decades ago, when a Jumi named Sappho came here, after the Jumi city fell apart, you know?"

Frankly, Ariesa had no idea what she was talking about. _Jumi city?_ But she didn't want to interrupt.

"Sappho was apparently someone fairly important to the Jumi. But they had all lost their importance, you see?" Revanshe pointed a finger for emphasis. "I think he was looking for others, trying to rebuild something that had fallen to pieces."

_Not unlike someone else I know_, thought Ariesa.

"He looked, and waited. This is a major port, I think he was waiting for some word to come across the sea. But no such luck. Finally, he gave up, and now only his core remains."

"The jewel hunter?" Ariesa guessed. Was that what she meant?

Revanshe only laughed. "No, hon. Jewel hunters have been around forever, but this one is new. They say it's a woman. But Sappho excised his core _himself_. Tore it from his own chest with a knife of Vizel gold, and threw it into the ocean, with all his dreams of a united Jumi. Apparently not deep enough, because it was found again. There you go, drowned dreams."

It was a morbid note to end on, and Ariesa sat in silence. Revanshe did not fail to notice.

"Let me buy you a drink," she said, shoving a glass into Ariesa's hand. It was some especially strong spirit; the fumes wafted to Ariesa's nose from the bar top. "I didn't mean to depress you. But it's not uncommon, Jumi giving up, you know?"

"I can see that," Ariesa replied. "But it doesn't make it right." She sipped the glass, and as the liquid slithered and burned down her throat, she hoped it would dull the sudden pain in her heart.

--

Bud charged in, heedless of Ariesa moping into her drink. "Ariesa!" he cried.

"Slow down, Bud," Ariesa chided, motioning him onto the stool next to her as Revanshe looked on with a disapproving expression. "What happened?"

"There was this guy talking to this skeleton about this ship from the Empire..." Bud's words tumbled all over each other as often happened with one who was overly excited. But finally she wormed the story out of him.

"Empire?" she inquired. "I thought there was a jewel hunter in town."

"Maybe they're the same," suggested Bud.

Revanshe looked suddenly serious. "The Empire?" she asked. "Jumi cores have a lot of power. I wouldn't be surprised if they came here for that."

"Where's your sister?" Ariesa asked, suddenly alarmed.

Bud hung his head slightly. "She was... shopping. She's probably somewhere there."

"The Empire never bothers us in this part of the world. What's going on?" Ariesa wondered out loud. Bud looked suddenly scared, and Revanshe shrugged. Ariesa stood up with hasty apologies to Revanshe, and with her young charge by her side, she headed towards the waterfront mall.

They found Lisa there, talking to a mermaid. She perked up immediately. "Hi, guys!" she waved. "Come meet my new friend!"

Ariesa and Bud wasted no time in running over. "Geez, what's the hurry?"asked the mermaid, swishing tail nonchalantly.

Lisa made a quick introduction, and even Flameshe became more somber as Ariesa hurriedly rattled out the tale with inserts from Bud. "So," she concluded. "There's something strange going on in this town."

"Ghosts... jewel hunters... empire... Jumi..." Lisa mused.

"A ship that sunk?" Flameshe asked.

"Yes, do you know something?" asked Ariesa.

"Nothing, yet," Flameshe said, then disappearing with a splash and no further greeting.

"You'd think she could have said goodbye," mused Lisa, hurt.

"Well, in any case," concluded Ariesa, "there's a Jumi core here, and someone's out to get it."

--

A day of searching had yielded no results, as the tired trio retired to an outdoor restaurant to watch the setting sun.

A flutter of wings was heard over the breeze, Ariesa and the twins paying it no mind until it grew ever closer, and suddenly, right next to them on the balcony rail alighted a woman with eagle's wings and talons. Her face was human, framed by blond curls, and quite pretty, in fact.

Bud just stared goggle-eyed, and Lisa kicked him under the table. "Hello," Ariesa greeted the siren politely.

"Hi," she replied shyly. "I'm... Elle... I was looking for Lisa?"

"That's me!" piped up the younger girl happily.

Elle smiled brightly. "I'm a friend of Flameshe's! I hear you were wondering about the ship?"

"Yes, definitely," replied Ariesa.

Elle looked around for a moment, fluttering wings nervously. "Well... it's pretty dangerous to even talk about it, with all the soldiers around... but the truth is... I sank the ship." Lisa gasped slightly, then covered her mouth, embarrassed.

"You're a siren, then? But why?" Ariesa wondered.

Elle sighed. "It was a sin, I know… I will have to redeem it somehow, the taking of others' lives… but it had to be done. They were on a secret mission to find some ultimate weapon, and they thought they could find clues to it here."

"The Empire?" Bud yelped. "That's one scary place. I hear it's run by a dead emperor and they have monsters and ghosts for soldiers."

"But we're far from it all here, aren't we?" Lisa asked nervously.

Elle hung her head slightly. "Maybe," she replied. "I've flown as far there as I dared... to the ocean edges, but the capital, Forsena, is too far inland. There's something strange going on there, like they're mobilizing again."

"After their leader fell a hundred years ago?" Ariesa was suddenly angry. "They took over most of the world, the only reason Domina and the lake region aren't part of the Empire is that we became too small to bother with! Centuries of Anise's legacy tearing apart the world, and just when it seemed it was all over, they started new wars, for hundreds of years they suppressed the memory and religion of the Goddess in favor of power. _Isn't that enough?_" She cut off her outburst as she realized all three of her companions were looking at her, and several other persons in the restaurant besides.

Sheepishly, she lowered her voice. "The Empire has been a danger in this world since Ricrot separated from Anuella, and that was long ago. Why now?"

"I can't answer that," replied Elle, "but I can do what I can to stop them now, and keep them from finding... whatever they are looking for here."

"You mean, the Jumi core?" blurted out Bud.

Elle looked thoughtful. "How did you know about the Blue Eye?"

"A Jumi told us," Lisa added helpfully.

"A Jumi?" Elle blinked big brown eyes in confusion. "They are still around? I thought they had all become dust and dirt by now."

Ariesa thought of Elazul and Pearl, searching for others of their kind. "There are some," she said sadly. "I hope there are more."

"The Jumi, a part of the world again, after the Empire ground them to bits," mused Elle. "If only that could happen, but... The Empire was searching for their cores a century ago. Who knows what the Empire might want with them now?"

--

The shadows were growing long as they found their way to the promontory where Bud had first seen the mysterious soldier. They had caught his trail and had been dogging his steps through the town, Ariesa stealthily following close, and the twins some distance behind.

Ariesa stopped at the base and turned to regard her apprentices. "I think... The two of you should wait here." She tried to conceal the nervousness in her own voice. They must have been feeling the same, because the two of them didn't argue, and Ariesa began to climb up the stony slope.

The moon was full, lighting her way as she crept stealthily upwards. She heard voices soon enough, and concealed herself just as Bud had said he had earlier. Beyond the stones, she saw a short armored figure that exactly matched Bud's description.

And talking to him, was clearly... a ghost.

It might have been the dark, but the ghost seemed almost tangible, as if she could have reached out and touched the armored steel plate gilded with Vizel gold. But she did not dare, and merely watched.

The living being reached out and in his hand was a sparkling sapphire, crystal- clear unlike the opaque shimmer of Elazul's and Pearl's cores. But something about it reminded her completely of those, not so much how it looked, but something she _felt_.

"My lord," the short man said plaintively.

The ghost looked down at it, misty fingers reaching to it then passing through. "Well done, Thoma," it intoned. "A Jumi core will surely lead us to the power we seek."

_What power? _wondered Ariesa.

Thoma clutched the blue stone in his fist. "I will bring it home to the Empire."

"Not so fast," came another voice.

A tall redhead fell to the ground just inches away from Ariesa's hiding place, before she herself could jump for the soldier. With a start, Ariesa realized that it was the same redhead she and Elazul had seen in the Mekiv Caverns earlier.

"That's a Jumi core, and I'm the one who gets to keep those," she said evilly.

Ariesa didn't dare wait another minute for the core to switch hands, and leaped out, sword ready. "Who are you?" she demanded.

The redhead turned to regard her. "Why, a jewel hunter, of course," she said, laughing. "And who are you?"

"_We're being hunted_," Ariesa remembered Elazul saying, and she struck.

She knocked the woman to the side as she dove for the imperial soldier, wrestling with him until she got the stone from his hand. Taking it from him was easy, but barely had she wrapped her fist around it when the redheaded woman attacked with a quick, deft kick to her stomach that sent her sword flying and herself tumbling.

The blue core skittered out of her hand across the pebbled ground, and the redhead stopped it neatly with her shoe. Ariesa lurched to her feet, wincing at the places she knew would be bruised later. Her head spun, and she tried to pull herself to her feet only to collapse shakily.

The soldier pulled himself up, heavy armor clanking, and with a scared cry, swung his own sword at the woman. She deflected the strike almost scornfully with a one-handed knife strike, wheeling quickly to drive the weapon just below the bottom of the breastplate. The short man grunted, and his opponent took advantage of his pause to drive the knife in again and again, long after he was any sort of threat, mere sadism seeming to drive her on. He took a step backwards and awkwardly fell, lying unmoving.

The woman held the stone aloft, it catching some of the same moonlight reflecting over the water. "Fool. This is worth more than any weapon the emperor might seek to find."

The soldier was breathing raggedly. "It can lead us to the Sword."

The redhead paused at that. "The Sword? I suppose a Jumi core, if anything, could lead you to it. Unfortunately, I have other plans for this one." And with a flash of light, she was gone, just as Ariesa made her move, leaping forward to grab empty air. She stumbled, and caught her balance again. Cursing under her breath, she turned to look at the person still remaining.

The soldier was lying prostrate on the ground, bleeding from the wounds of the other woman's knives. Ariesa forced herself over to the wounded young man, and the ghost floated nonchalantly above them. She pulled Thoma's visor back… to see a face bearing dark eyes in a face surrounded by dark hair, somewhat nondescript but not unattractive. But what absolutely shocked her was his age; he couldn't be more than sixteen or seventeen, and perhaps younger still.

"The Empire uses its children as soldiers?" she wondered angrily.

"It is the greatest honor to serve the Emperor," Thoma told her, suddenly coughing. "They tell us that since the day we are born." Behind her, she heard the twins skittering up, as it was apparent no one left was a threat.

Lisa knelt down by Ariesa's side. "_Stupid_," she said angrily. "Stupid, stupid, stupid. Are all guys as dumb as my brother?"

"Hey!" came Bud's voice from behind, but both the women ignored it. Lisa pulled off Thoma's helm completely, and produced a handkerchief from somewhere to dot at his face.

With Thoma's wounds being addressed, the now-irritated Ariesa addressed the ghost, a misty shape still floating unconcerned against the night sky. "Why are you here? What does the empire want from us?"

To her surprised the ghost addressed her back. "It is of no moment to me, I merely do what I am told. We cannot die until the imperial order is fulfilled. His Highness is immortal and controls the dead." The thought made Ariesa shiver.

Then the ghost ripped a hole in the fabric of reality, and was gone.

--

Ariesa sat on the beach some days later, feeling rather disconsolate about the whole scenario. Thoma was being well cared for in the town hospital, and she and the twins had stopped by to visit the quiet young man a time or two. With no family around, she figured it was the best they could do for him. But that wasn't what was bothering her.

"Want to talk about it?" Lisa asked soothingly, picking up on her mood with that ages-old feminine intuition.

Ariesa sighed. "I'm just feeling like maybe I got too excited and got in over my head. There's more going on here than I thought."

"It makes me wonder too, what Elazul and Pearl are going through," Lisa added. Ariesa nodded in agreement.

"Well, we can't stop now, can we?" Bud exclaimed, jumping around excitedly.

_The two of you can, she thought, you're too young, you have to_. But though it might be a bad idea, somehow, she knew she wouldn't be walking away.


	9. Secrets: Light

**Author's note: **Actually, author's question, for those of you who DO know the game Legend of Mana. (If you are one of my readers who only know my version, ignore this, it won't make any sense to you.) So the question is... WHERE IS SAPPHO MENTIONED? I heard the fish said it, then I heard he was the blue guy in the city... but all I can find is Alex mentioning that Drowned Dreams was a sapphire... and I lugged Elazul along on all those quests and everything. Does anyone know where it was mentioned - like, the exact game script? It's kind of bugging me that I can't find it.

--

**9. Secrets: Light**

Heath surveyed the mountainside around and below critically.

Wendel had come far in the nearly two hundred years since the tree had died, and the city itself was something of a bustling metropolis now. Trade, not religion, was the order of the day for the town. The temple was practically overrun, and most wanted a more spiritual place to worship.

At least, that was the story the High Priest told the people of Wendel. But Heath knew as well that it was only a matter of time before Forcena squeezed its grip on its "ally", and the more valuable Wendel was, the sooner that would happen. As only a prosperous city, it was desirable; as the holy center of the world, it would be absolutely tantalizing. Even after making the decision to move the temple, it still felt like he was only buying time.

The logic was easy. The hard decision was deciding where to move it too.

He had made the trip himself up to the old site of the ancient city of Light, but besides the fact that the ruins just plain freaked him out, there seemed something sacrilegious about razing that ancient memorial, the former home of the Stone of Light. Like exhuming a grave. That city belonged to the ancient Goddess, and for her he would leave it.

The new Goddess would want a new home, he was certain.

So from the ancient city, he had started walking, finding himself traveling toward the tumultuous waterfall that plunged hundreds of feet down the mountainside into the grottoes below. The stone indentations were ever expanded by that endless stream of water into widening and deepening caverns at the bottom, teeming with miniscule life that gave a soft green light to the place.

Mekiv was the name of the waterfall and the caverns below, named for his eldest son; and his heir, now that Leires was otherwise occupied. The name meant either "tree" or "life" in the old elven language, Aeris had said, and it seemed entirely appropriate to him. It meant creation, a new beginning.

He stared down that rush of water for a long time, and slowly started to wonder: what if their new city was built into the rocks itself? Not a novel idea, exactly; Navarre's Sand Fortress had comfortably existed for centuries in and on just such rocky outcrops. As soon as the idea struck him, it refused to let go. The spot lay at the borders, more or less, of Rolante and Navarre, and he could feel the energy of fire and wind mixing harmoniously with that of the light from Wendel from the west.

It took quite a bit of time, quite a lot of walking, and a degree of negotiation with Rolante to secure the spot, but eventually it was done. The day came to christen the new city, and before he began the ritual, he stepped away for a moment by himself on one of the windy terraces. On the hillside above, he could see the nests of the enormous and brilliantly colored Cancun Bird, rumored to a creature of the Goddess herself. It seemed to be the crowning glory of the new city, and he sat below the heavenly creature, feeling a blessed emergence of Wisp, Salamando, and Jinn, all in one place.

Light to guide her, fire to feed her, wind to carry her. This would indeed be a suitable home for the new Goddess.

-------------------------------------------

Leires looked up at the vaulted interior of the temple, nodding unthinkingly in approval. It had been only a handful of months since the site had been consecrated, but construction was proceeding rapidly on the temple and the city below. The structures nestled softly into the stone itself as if resting, bearing with, not fighting, the environment into which they were being introduced. The new holy city would turn out to be her father's greatest work, she was certain.

Soaking in the atmosphere of the place, she sat, and paused for a few minutes of reflection. Frankly, she surprised he had taken so long to get to it, with all the disasters that had befallen the world. She had been fortunate enough to be isolated from the worst of it, in the century she had lived in the Beast Kingdom, but the rest of the world was not so lucky.

It had been ninety-odd years since Anise's ill-fated journeys to the Holyland had started what was now called the War of the Tree. Not that Anise ever had a chance to capture the power of the new Goddess's sapling; that was protected by more power than any human could hope to comprehend.

That should have ended it right there. Anise's great-grandmother Angela had scorched the Holyland almost down to the bare earth; necessary, Leires, thought, to remove the rubble and clear the way for the new Goddess. She herself had met the Queen of Reason once as a girl; even in later life, Angela had been beautiful, and vivacious.

Perhaps if Anise had ever met the woman instead of living with her legend she might not have been so jealous and desperate to compete. Anise could not get to the young Tree, but the rocks of the Holyland still had something of the ancient Goddess in it; weak, and fading, but there nevertheless. Anise took those and added the only power she could find, that of the Underworld, to try to make something of them.

Leires shuddered slightly at the thought, and wondered if that had been what had corrupted the woman. Whatever she did, it created the Eyes of Flame, stones with power something like shattered Mana Stones, but far more dangerous and uncontrolled. And that's when the world had been forced to act.

Anise was driven from the Holyland, but her following of mages did not give up the fight even when their leader disappeared, her memory leading them on. The war had dragged on for close to fifty years, on and off, until the rumors of Anise's death began to spread, leaving her followers bewildered and broken.

There was the barest pause of peace, until the Faerie Wars began as the world had barely settled down from the other. It had been Anise's estranged daughter Anuella who had begun it; though Leires understood why, and thought her motivations somewhat better than her mother's.

Anuella used Mana as well, but in a much safer way than her mother; she steered clear of the volatile magic of the Underworld, though it meant her creations lacked Anise's power. The fairies saw her work, and approved, and lent their aid to her. Soon enough Anuella found herself leading those fairies against the same mages who had once supported her mother, power-hungry mages still driven by Anise's legacy and snatching Mana wherever they could find it. Those new conflicts had been going on for only a decade or two. _Only_, she thought ironically.

"Daughter, are you ready?" Heath's arrival interrupted her thoughts.

"I am," she said, raising herself gracefully as they entered the inner nave of the temple together.

Leires had come to give the new city whatever powers of Mana she could, murmuring prayers to goddess old and new as she lit the fires to signal the new city's founding, raising a wind to fan the flame brightly. "Fire is the beginning, and sometimes the end," she murmured; these two torches were meant to burn eternally. The building was to be called the Temple of Healing, in the hope that one day the powers of healing might return; but it would have the powers of fire and wind to help it survive until then.

Around her shuffled some of the Nekos, the cat-people of the desert. Long known as traders, they had been a part of Wendel's economy since her childhood. The real surprise had been when a small cadre chose to commit themselves to the new city as protectors – not just themselves, but their descendants hereafter. Her father had been so impressed that he had named the city Gato, the elven word for the Nekos, in their honor. "It shows we are all meant to be joined together, no divisions between races before the Goddess," he had told her.

She supposed she was grateful to have lived so long, grateful for the elven blood that gave her that gift. Though much of her family had passed away anyway. Her father and mother were left to her, and her grandmother Carlie, and some of her younger aunts, uncles, and cousins.

And one other. She was trying not to think about that.

Her father watched her calmly as she lit the two torches. He allowed her a moment to step back and admire her work, twin flames burning brightly with no visible fuel. "My sister's here," he had told her that very morning. Leires hadn't needed to ask which sister he was referring to.

Now, as she completed the ritual, she gave her father a nod to acknowledge. "Out on the cliffside terrace," he told her in response, and she reluctantly turned to leave the Temple. As much as she wished otherwise, she could hardly avoid her aunt.

Though she considered that very idea once again when she stepped out onto the terrace to see the tall moonlight-blond figure, dressed, as always, in the gray silks she preferred. And Leires swore, the woman had a hammer a foot longer every time she saw her. For the moment, she had the heavy weapon resting head-down on the rocky soil, as she stared out over the valley beyond, possibly looking towards Wendel.

"Shayla," she called, and the figure turned.

"No one calls me that anymore," the tall woman replied. "My own mother calls me Blackpearl."

Leires sat, adjusting her white skirts gracefully. "Carlie does whatever she likes, and she's as flighty and emotional as she ever was. Besides, she's probably okay with what you're doing now."

"And you aren't?" A raised eyebrow.

Leires averted her gaze over to the beginnings of the town being carved into and built on the hillside. "I'm not sure. That was before too many started to want to become Jumi."

"Jumi?" The raised eyebrow was joined by a wry smile. "You know that started as a slur, right?"

Leires nodded impatiently. "It was jewel-me, or something, meant to be an insult. Now it's just slang, and unless you have a better term, it is the one I will use."

"So be it. Is the name the only thing that bothers you about us?"

_Us_, Leires noted. It said a lot about where Shayla's mind was at. Leires took a deep breath. It wasn't that she didn't like her aunt, exactly; it was more that she was troubled by her, and it was with that in mind that she framed her response. "It's not just that so many want to become Jumi. It's that they are participating in the wars, too. On both sides! You yourself fought with the fairies at the War of the Tree, and now you fight with the mages. Whose side are _you _on, Blackpearl?"

"Well, to answer the first question," Lady Blackpearl replied, ignoring Leires' slightly condescending switch of name, "people seek to become Jumi because we are all trying to find our own way to preserve ourselves and our way of life. We have something that others don't, and it brings us a responsibility to share the Goddess's Mana with all."

"Tears of healing," Leires murmured. "Shards of life." The extraordinary powers to heal any wound short of death had already become the stuff of legend.

Blackpearl continued. "You might have done the same, but you took a different path. I think many will find out soon enough there is a cost for us," she finished darkly. "Kevin tried pacifism, and it was a noble idea, but without Mana, it did nothing for the Beast Kingdom. When we do nothing, we _are_ nothing; when we fight, we determine who we really are."

"I'll agree with you that pacifism didn't work," Leires granted. "My kingdom is suffering, but I will worry about that myself. But my last question?" she pressed.

Blackpearl only looked at her. "I want the same as you. To save whatever we can of Mana, this world, and ourselves. What are you doing, trying to find Mana in that tower of yours?"

That line of inquiry always made Leires squirm. "It's not underworld magic. I am not Anise. You're the one who is trying for eternal life! Do you know why Jumi's bodies disappear when they are killed, why they leave no corpse? Because they have already outlived a human existence. By any measure, _they should not exist!_"

Leires wondered if she had gone too far. Rumors of Jumi dying were only that, only hearsay; but thankfully, Blackpearl's look in response was only doubtful. "Leires, niece, you work with what you are given. As do I."

Leires did not think that accounted for Blackpearl's loyalties very much at all, but she let it be and switched the subject. "Technically, that's my stone, you know," she said, pointing a finger at Blackpearl's core.

Blackpearl pretended they hadn't been through this before, and she didn't know Leires was doing it to be petty. "Surely you can spare a little bit of your stone for an old relative. You've been queen of the moonlight forest for over a hundred years."

"And will be as long as I live," Leires replies. _Or it finally becomes truly absorbed into Forcena,_ she thought.

-------------------------------------------

Blackpearl tried to hide the irritation in her step as she left back towards the houses.

Her niece always tried her patience. Leires had good intentions, but she often thought emotionally, thinking her wanting something was enough to make it so. That's why she tried to resurrect whatever Mana she could at the top of that tower. Granted, there was more Mana there than most places nowadays, but Blackpearl knew that it was better to think logically and take action, than hoping for whatever trickles of Mana there were to bear some fruit.

_If you don't have a pure source_, she thought, touching hand to her core instinctively.

There were other things that bothered her. No one had said Anise's name for a while, and it was the sort of thing she would rather not think about.

Nor did she want to really discuss the details of her motivations. In the currently disorganized state that was the nascent Jumi race, she was the _de facto_ leader - until someone else cared to rise to the occasion, at which point Blackpearl would gladly give over the job. But after that fateful trip to the Tower, word had gotten around about her, and now plenty of others were searching for the pieces of Mana stone that meant eternal life; and for that, she felt it was her responsibility.

They were looking for direction, for someone to tell them what to do with what they were now, and Goddess knew, for better or for worse Blackpearl was the one they looked to. As if she had all the answers. Some days, she wished she had never found that piece of Mana Stone. But she pushed that down, the way she had learned to do with most inconvenient and distracting ideas.

The simple answer would have been that she was trying to preserve the Jumi. _Jumi_, she thought, whispering it and feeling the word roll over her tongue; it sounded alright, and was better than some of the other words that were used for them. Like _dirt_. But there was more, more to what she was trying to do, than just the preservation of the race she had initiated.

It was what her mother had asked her to do, nearly fifty years before. But she remembered as if it had been yesterday.

_It had been a long journey to Lumina, the land where the retired High Priestess now resided, leaving the running of things generally to Heath. Carlie seemed happy enough in the land that now saw endless moonlight in the same manner that Leires' beloved moonlight forest once had._

_Blackpearl had barely seen her mother since leaving her old name behind, choosing the name for what she was now. All Jumi chose new names. Odder still, the memory of her old name seemed to fade, and she found it harder than she would have anticipated to remember her origins._

_Carlie had no such problem, rushing to embrace her prodigal daughter with the childlike exuberance she had never lost. Blackpearl froze slightly before relaxing into the greeting._

_"Blackpearl," Carlie chattered, as if that was the name she had gave her daughter from the start. "What brings you here?" Carlie had that elven attribute where you couldn't exactly figure her age, the way her eyes sparkled. Blackpearl had little in common with her mother as far as personality went; she had seen much more of herself in her father and her aunt, Queen Lise of Rolante._

_"It's Mana, mother," Blackpearl said, sitting on a chair wearily._

_Carlie leaned forward. "What about it?" Not questioning, just gently prodding for more information._

_"I..." Blackpearl paused. "I feel it in my core." She was still reluctant to admit to the powers that were in the piece of rock lodged in her skin, the powers that were only beginning to be discovered by herself and others._

_Carlie, though, only nodded, suddenly serious and wondrous as the legendary High Priestess who had brought the gospel of the new Goddess to the world, before war had come to overrule peace._

_"The fairies told me much the same," Carlie replied._

_"Fairies?!" Blackpearl explained. "They avoid humans like the plague, and only accepted human help to drive off Anise because they were being decimated on their own. When did you talk to fairies?" She herself had been on the side of the fairies since almost as soon as she had found her core; they had come to her themselves, pulled by the Mana inside it. And even so, she only saw them sporadically, they sheltering themselves in the space between the dimensions out of fear._

_"It was some time ago, when I was in the Forest of Wonder…" Carlie looked suddenly very sad. "You have forgotten a lot," she observed. "Don't you remember what fairies meant, before you were born?"_

_Blackpearl reached back into the depths of memory, to recall her mother's stories from when she was very little. "I... do remember," she finally said. "Fairies. The messengers of the Goddess."_

_"And the new Goddess." Carlie looked from where she had faced away. "Don't forget, Shayla. The memory is in here most of all," she said, tapping one finger on Blackpearl's core as she looked in her eyes. "We have to remember to imagine our future. It's the only way we will shape the world."_

_The slip of name was unintentional, but it unwittingly underlined Carlie's comments. The words struck Blackpearl, and she knew her mother was telling the truth; they couldn't afford to forget the past, or the Goddess. Perhaps that was one of those things she, and others like her, were meant to preserve. Living memories in rock. Something most did not appreciate when they took it on - blessing, and curse._

_"What did I always teach you?" Carlie continued._

_Blackpearl could have recited it in her sleep. "Balance. The strength of the Goddess." She knew, better than anyone, that it had been the new Goddess herself, the Goddess not yet born, who had charged Carlie with retaining Her memory. "Maintaining that balance is our responsibility to her. Even death and life are part of the whole, as even the Goddess herself can die, and be born again. Opposites will shine more brightly together if we do not allow them to destroy each other."_

_Carlie beamed. "Excellent memory, my daughter." She leaned forward, chin in her hands and her bright, youthful smile across her face. "That was when the Goddess was alive. But there is more. I have talked to the faeries since Her death... and they are not the same, they having changed more than any of us." The smile fell into sadness._

_"They fought against Anise's mages, in the War of the Tree."_ That's why I chose this form, this identity, _Blackpearl thought to herself. "Isn't that the right thing to do?"_

_"They shouldn't even been able to fight." Carlie jutted out her lip childishly and stubbornly. "They shouldn't belong to this world at all, but Mana has changed to make them... something different. And I think they cannot carry Mana the way they once did. They would like to be the messengers of the new Goddess, but the connection to Her is… broken, if not severed."_

_"The disruption is from Anise and her mages." Blackpearl argued, feeling equally recalcitrant._

_"Only for the moment. Something more is at work. I remember, it was once thought that the activities of humans, their wars and conflicts, could truly affect the forces of Mana, but it's not really true. The only reason Anise can force and twist Mana the way she does now, is because the Goddess and her Mana are so weak and vulnerable." Carlie let that sadness cross her face again. "You know, I knew Anise, when she was a young child… so strange to see what she became… As long as she is still alive, the mages won't give up. I would have gone to the War of the Tree myself, if I could do anything to help… I had hoped we could survive on the knowledge of the future goddess, but it seems humankind cannot think so far ahead. I had hoped… but the belief in the new Goddess is fading as Mana once faded. It's beyond anything I can hope to affect, and more than that, I feel even the paltry amounts of Mana left in the world are changing, out of balance. It makes…" Carlie paused. "It makes me fear for the future of the new Goddess herself."_

_She turned to Blackpearl with an unusual fury. "My daughter, you must preserve what can be preserved. It doesn't matter whose side it is. Side with the ones who want to save, not destroy. Do whatever is needed to save Mana, to save the Goddess." It hit uncomfortably close to what Blackpearl had been thinking earlier._ That meant the fairies, obviously, those protecting the tree, _she thought to herself; what reason could there be to join the other side?_

_Carlie abruptly switched topic, as she often did. "Do you remember when I took you to see dragons, Shayla? Above Rolante?" Blackpearl nodded; a much younger self of hers could recall nuzzling a white dragon seemingly as young as herself, unable to speak to her in anything but nonverbal language. "You know, I don't even know where the dragons went to now, but back then – I taught you healing magic, even though there is not enough Mana to use it now. I wanted you to be a princess, a priestess, something that mattered."_

_"But this matters most of all," Blackpearl said, touching her core with the barest brush of fingertips._

_"I know," Carlie replied. Mother and daughter's eyes met, ocean-blue and blue-grey._

_The look made her uncomfortable, and Blackpearl broke the moment, turned to look out the window at the strange moonlight dousing the town. "Why does it always have to be night here?" she griped._

_"Residue. You would be better off asking why it is light at all." Carlie returned to her exuberant self. "They say it's faeries' light, or mischievous spirits… But that's enough. Let's just enjoy your visit, shall we!" She swirled gleefully into the kitchen._

_Blackpearl watched her go. She had always thought she was the least like her mother of any of her numerous full and half-siblings, except for her height, and even that had a lot to do with elven roots. It wasn't so simple, though. She remembered when she had some of that same hope rather than sheer determination, when she had been looking for something to help in the war, and now the Jumi just tried to keep everyone alive, and sometimes she didn't even know what she was meant to do, who was truly right, just that she had to keep_ doing.

_Blackpearl wondered how much of herself she might be losing out of necessity. She looked outside at the faeries' light, then turned away to put her head in her hands._


	10. Legends: Hope

**10. Legends: Hope**

"What do you mean we can't go with you?" Bud pouted. "Don't you trust us?"

Ariesa sighed. She remembered herself at their age, and she would have been just as pouty about being left behind. But they were her responsibility, and she wasn't sure what came next...

"I do trust you," she told Bud gently. "That's why I'm letting the two of you go home alone, instead of bringing you there." Behind them, Lisa, ever the more practical twin, was packing supplies for her and her brother. She looked up long enough to roll her eyes at Ariesa with a jerk of her head over to her brother, the meaning clear.

Bud was not appeased. "It's just because it's out of your way to go home."

"Then it works out for us both, doesn't it?" Ariesa said brightly. Lisa stifled a giggle, and Bud's complaining descended into mere grumbles which Ariesa could dismiss as white noise.

"All done," Lisa announced soon enough, and they started out together until they reached the turnoff; north would follow the lake back to Domina and home, and east led up into the mountains. Lisa looked up the path to the east.

"I hope you catch up with them in Gato," she said, and Ariesa did not respond, lost in her own worries.

--

"Elazul," Pearl suddenly interrupted the silence in which they had been walking together. "Isn't that..."

He followed her pointing finger, and sure enough, she was right. It was Ariesa.

The Jumi cursed himself silently. He could have steered her away from here, and he would have, had he had any idea she might come here. The girl was a decent fighter, but how could she know what she was involving herself in? No one but Jumi could really understand what it was like to be Jumi.

He confided his worries briefly to Pearl, who nodded gravely as she listened, then responded in that calming way of hers that always kept him centered. "It could be anything, Elazul. Maybe she's just here on an errand?"

"Only one way to find out," he said, and strode forward to clasp her shoulder.

She wheeled around instinctively, hand on sword, but recognition kicked in quickly. "Elazul!" she cried, in the tone of someone who had just found what she was looking for.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, a bit gruffer than intended. Pearl sidled up to him, her smile a little warmer.

Ariesa's smile fell, however. "I've just come from Polpota," she told them. "There's some things you should know."

The mention of Polpota was enough for Elazul to start looking for a more private place to have the discussion. They stepped out onto one of the cliff protrusions, far enough away from the town's houses that even the winds would not carry their words.

The story spilled out of her, and Elazul's expression grew grim. _One more hope of finding other Jumi dashed. _"Who was Sappho?" asked Ariesa as she finished the story.

Elazul remembered a somewhat rough-edged but dignified Jumi of Sapphire, someone who was all a young boy could really count on for answers to who, and what, he was. A guardian, whose knight had been lost some time before, when the Empire stole Elazul's race from him before he even had a chance to get to know it. But he could not allow himself to express all that, not to her, not when he only had barely begun to know her. "Someone I knew," he replied, and Ariesa seemed to accept that.

She returned to a more cheerful mood soon enough. "I was worried I wouldn't find you here!" she exclaimed with an enthusiasm that surprised Elazul; he had thought her somewhat uptight when he had met her in Domina. Something, subtly, had changed, if only it was being away from her hometown. "I thought you'd be gone by now for sure."

"It's my fault," Pearl said guiltily. "We only got here a couple days ago. I slowed him down. I always do."

Elazul had never seen things with Pearl that way, but he was tongue-tied trying to find something reassuring to say to his guardian, and suddenly very grateful when Ariesa saved him the trouble. "I'm sure it's fine, Pearl. Well, now that we're all here, may I offer my help?"

Elazul suppressed an urge to shake his head. She was so wonderfully dedicated, and so absolutely naive. "We've heard only hints of a Jumi, but now I am more worried about the jewel hunter. I can only assume she's heard the same rumors we have, and that means she'll probably come here next… In this town, there's one place where one can hope to find some answers - the Temple of Healing."

"I've always wanted to see that," Ariesa mused. "They say it's the home of the Goddess – I don't really believe in the Goddess, but it's still something to see, right?" Elazul nodded, granting permission with that bare motion of his head, and wondering what he had gotten himself into.

--

Pearl had readily agreed to Elazul's suggestion to let the two of them go ahead, and to meet them at the temple. It wasn't that Elazul wanted to leave her behind, not at all, that was obvious to Ariesa – more that some anxiety of Elazul was driving him forward, the more so after the story she had told from Polpota, and she figured he wanted his guardian kept out of whatever worried him.

Ariesa climbed the steep, treacherous pathways behind her semi-familiar companion, keeping her eyes focused on his retreating back. The wind howled from the valley below, strangely soothing in its melody, but underneath, part of it almost seemed to be... crying, sadness mixed in with joy.

So entranced was she with Jinn's song that she almost didn't notice when Elazul stopped in his tracks in the presence of another man in the road.

"Who goes there?" asked the stranger, a man with hair the color of flame and expression that flashed to match. He stood proudly, his entire demeanor speaking a challenge.

Elazul return his look pointedly. "I'm Elazul," he replied simply. "And you are?"

"Rubens, fire-keeper for the temple," the man answered equally plainly.

"What does a fire-keeper do?" Ariesa wondered out loud, wondering as soon as she said it if it made her sound stupid.

Rubens, fortunately, didn't seem offended by her ignorance. "The same two torches have burnt in this temple for hundreds of years, my lady, since Gato was founded," he told her. "They symbolize our hope."

"Hope…" Elazul murmured, and Ariesa flashed back to a conversation they had held in the Mekiv Caverns. _Hope. Perhaps not enough to go around._

"The fairies keep them burning, with their power, and I'm the one who speaks to them to keep it so. We call it faeries' light. Is that what you have come here for?" Rubens interjected.

"Fairies?" Elazul looked around in puzzlement. "Here? I thought they were all gone from the world after the wars."

"Not in the town so much, but around, by the waterfall. Down by the lake. In the jungle. Wherever they find someplace they feel comfortable with. You might be able to see them yourself…" Rubens looked at Elazul, as if considering something.

That caused Elazul to start, more surprise than Ariesa had seen him show before. Hesitantly, she stepped in. "I am Ariesa," she began simply, "and we are here to see the priestess of the temple. If that is hope, then so be it."

Rubens turned that peculiar fiery gaze on her, and Ariesa was surprised to gaze into eyes as red as his hair.

"I cannot promise you healing of the body, but we do our best to provide healing of the soul." Rubens' eyes narrowed. "There's a rumor going around about a thief, someone bragging that they were going to put out the temple's flame," Rubens told them. "Be careful in the temple, and act respectfully. We take such threats rather seriously around here." And with that, he returned his gaze to sweep across the valley beyond, a clearly dismissive gesture.

Elazul looked as if he wanted to ask more, but Ariesa tugged him along with her insistently. He swallowed, and took one last look at Rubens.

As they passed under the archway, he leaned to whisper to her. "I think he's a Jumi."

Ariesa was taken aback. "How could you tell?"

"There was a famous Jumi, long ago, of the highest stratum of knights, the Lucidia, named Rubens... I tried to get close enough to tell for sure. There's a resonance, between the cores, you see, if only you get close enough..."

"Intriguing," Ariesa murmured, thinking of Elazul dragging her through the Mekiv Caverns towards Pearl, he heading for her as straight as an arrow. "You never met him?"

Elazul paused as if she had said something embarrassing. "I am… well… I've been told that I might be the youngest of the Jumi." His last words came out in a rush. "So… I haven't met a lot of others."

"The youngest?" Ariesa started at that, wondering what exactly that meant, but Elazul said no more.

Her thoughts were distracted by the sight of the building perched on the edge of the cliff… the Gato Temple of Healing.

Like all other structures in Gato, it was carved out of rock, but this somehow had been chiseled into a rock formation teetering on the very edge of a high cliff, as if only the permission of Gnome allowed it to remain standing. Winds whistled below, and Ariesa looked _down_ to see clouds. This lonesome structure stood there, silently, as it had for hundreds of years, one of the last shrines to the Goddess since the Empire had, over centuries, crushed Her priesthood as heretics.

It hushed them both as they passed into the coolness of the stone interior. Rainbows skittered across the floor from the stained glass windows high above them that some brave soul had managed to put in. Even their own footsteps seemed to disrupt the peacefulness of the temple's calm.

"Where do we go next?" Elazul wondered in an unusually quiet tone.

"I'm not sure... maybe we can ask?" Ariesa replied, but before them several of the nuns knelt at the altar of the main room they had entered, obviously absorbed in meditation or prayer. Ariesa could not bring herself to interrupt them. Elazul seemed to feel the same, motioning her towards a door at the side of the room. Together they made a quiet exit to leave the nuns absorbed in their worship.

They emerged into the back hallways of the temple, where fortunately they found nuns more practically absorbed in the days' business, and only too happy to give them information.

"The abbess is meditating right now," one told her. "You won't be able to see her until later this afternoon."

"Dammit!" Elazul cursed, having at least the respect to wait until they were out of earshot.

Ariesa gave her semi-friend a gently withering look. "Well, perhaps we could take advantage of the situation and enjoy the scenery. There's plenty of time to take a walk around."

Elazul only shrugged. Ariesa smiled a little smugly. On that man, that was as close to enthusiasm as she could hope for.

--

Elazul didn't feel like saying much. With them effectively kept out of the temple, he instinctively found himself drifting back to Pearl, feeling her pull just a little to the west of the temple. Ariesa accompanied him, and they found themselves heading towards the Mekiv waterfall.

"This is the one that spills into the caverns?" he asked her.

"The same," she replied. "Can't you feel it?"

It wasn't the waterfall that he was feeling; though he thought he might be able to if he really wanted to try. But what he was feeling was the small woman now visible, sitting by a small pool where the waterfall stopped only to crash down over the edge once again. She looked into the water dreamily, a look only made her prettier, accentuating her delicate demeanor.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded, realizing too late the harsh tone he had put into his voice. He _always_ realized it too late when he spoke that way, and now he could feel Ariesa's eyes on him, uncomfortably disapproving.

Pearl was used to it, and didn't even look up. "Talking to fairies," she replied simply.

"Fairies?" He remembered what Rubens said. "You can see them? I don't see any here. I thought they didn't show themselves to people."

"They don't, unless you're Jumi," Pearl told him seriously. "They're attracted to our cores, to the Mana inside them. They miss Mana as much as any of us, maybe more so."

"Oh." Elazul replied, looking around questioningly. "So where are they?"

"They won't come out while she's here." Pearl waved one hand towards Ariesa. "It's alright though, we were done talking."

"What did they say?" Elazul sat on the rocks by her, Ariesa following his example a few feet away.

Pearl shivered slightly. "They are…" she paused. "They are rather hateful towards human beings right now. I don't really know why, exactly…"

"Maybe they're worried about someone coming after the temple flames?" Ariesa interjected. "Like Rubens told us?"

"Maybe," conceded Elazul. He looked into the rushing water, but there was nothing to see.

Ariesa swiveled her head around, gazing at the town visible some distance away. "This place feels… nice," she said. "Like they put a lot of hope into building it."

"It's the religious center," Elazul replied. "They'd almost have to."

"But she's right, Elazul, it's more than that," Pearl told him. "There's… something more here, otherwise the fairies wouldn't come here."

Elazul paused to wonder what he was hoping for himself. He looked at his guardian, and she gave him one of her shy smiles back. She took his right hand gently in both of hers, and he couldn't help but smile back.

--

Elazul kept looking back without realizing it at the temple door, where this time they had firmly walked her to. Knowing where his guardian was seemed to be a great weight off Elazul's back, lightening the mood as they stumbled awkwardly once again down the steep, windy path that had led up to the temple, until the city they had bypassed earlier opened up below them once again. The city of Gato was a terraced structure built into the cliffs itself, like the Temple almost one with the stone from which it had been born. Hot sun burned the ancient cliffs, but somehow, she did not mind, not with the breezes popping up to cool her. Even Elazul, after a while, seemed to have trouble being grumpy.

They walked together in a friendly comfortable silence, until voices reached her ear.

"Isn't that Rubens?" she asked, the first words either had spoken in an hour.

"Shhh," Elazul admonished her. "I feel like there's something more going on here than meets the eye."

Stealthily they crept along the rocky path towards the voices that became ever more clear.

"You gave up so easily, and came to hide here?" asked an incredulous woman's voice. "You're not worried about your petrified sweetheart?" Ariesa stuck her head around a rock to see a nun talking to Rubens, who was himself perched at the top of the cliff with that same hard-as-stone he had given earlier look directed roughly southeast.

"The Jumi are gone. It's best we all die out. Nothing good can come of it."

"I _knew_ it!" hissed Elazul, and Ariesa idly wondered when he was able to sneak so close to her. She was suddenly very conscious of his presence, his body disconcertingly close to her.

The nun approached Rubens boldly. "Life is like this town... cutting through rock to make pathways, pathways that lead us to the top... But you're no longer stone, you've gone soft, too soft to protect anyone. Only the strong survive. Sometimes, you need to hurt others to protect your precious ones. It's the way of Mana. Don't you agree, Sir Knight?" she finished, her head turning towards their hiding place.

"Busted," Ariesa whispered with a half-smile. Elazul only gave up the pretense of secrecy and stepped out brazenly.

"How did you know?" he demanded of the nondescript nun.

Her face was not visible, but her eyes narrowed in a way that gave Ariesa chills despite the sun's warmth as she stepped out of hiding herself. "What do _you_ think?"

Rubens only looked quizzically at Elazul. "A Knight, then. I knew I recognized you as Jumi. What are you doing here?"

"You weren't exactly forthcoming about yourself." Elazul pulled himself up straight, and Ariesa realized in fact how young he was, relatively. "I'm looking for the others."

"And then what?" Rubens replied, in a half-mocking tone.

"Live together again. Return the race to what it once was. Help each other. Isn't that the natural thing to do?" Elazul replied.

Rubens only shook his head with a hint of scorn. "Lapis Knight, you are so young and you have no idea what you are talking about. You don't know what it was like, why the city of the Jumi went to ruins. A traitor among us, everything I believed in shattered, everything the Jumi were supposed to stand for."

"If you don't believe in the Jumi, what do you believe in?" Elazul replied hotly. "So that's it? We're what, walking jewelry, not human beings? You have faith in no one?"

"No one," Rubens agreed. "Had enough? I gave up everything to come here, and I left the Jumi behind long ago."

The nun had remained silent in this exchange. "The young one's right, you know. We can't get to the top without a flame of hope in our hearts."

"Are you mocking me?" Rubens stuttered. "That's what they used to call me, so many years ago. The flame of hope. That hope _died_."

"I see," she replied. "So that is what happened to the Flame of Hope. The world is full of the sparkle of life, of Mana, and your sparkle is _lost_, you clod. A disgrace to the Jumi themselves. Stones that lose their sparkle shall be punished!"

The nun was on Rubens in a flash, and Elazul dove forward as one with Ariesa, but the nun only hissed, "Stop right there!" Ariesa saw the knife she pulled glint in the sun, and to her left, she saw Elazul freeze, and agonized look on his face.

Rubens struggled in her grasp, but the nun had some uncanny strength, and he could not escape her grip. The older Jumi twisted, but the woman holding him only laughed, and the knife tore through his stomach. Blood seeped out of the wound, showing red against the skin revealed by the rip in Rubens' clothes, only to spread and blend in with the red of the coat, distinguishable only as it stained the white accents. Elazul gasped in horror as Rubens slumped, one hand reaching for his abdomen.

The wound should have been deadly, but somehow Rubens was still breathing, even as the woman let him go and he slumped forward to his knees. Another breath, and his entire body fell to the ground, and the Flame of Hope lay there crumpled, a bleeding shell.

Elazul moved barely an inch, but the woman leaned over her prey, brandishing her knife to drive the point home. "One step closer.." she said, lowering her weapon to just below the collarbone. Elazul inhaled sharply, and Ariesa remembered that was the location of the core. The life of a Jumi.

The nun leaned further over him, to look straight down into his face. "Are you so fatalistic now? Now, that you face death so closely?

"Sandra. The jewel hunter." Rubens forced out the words. Ariesa's stomach dropped.

Sandra laughed. "One and the same. Do you want to live? It hurts, doesn't it, Knight of the Lucidia? Then make it go away. Cry for me. Cry, and beg for your life. If you can do that, your life might be worth saving."

The first real fear showed in Rubens' eyes. Ariesa wanted to cry out, but there was no one to help, no one who could arrive in time, and Sandra was too close to Rubens for she and Elazul to reach him.

Elazul tried anyway, lunging in a flash, but Sandra was quicker.

"The flame of hope is mine," she said, laughing. A quick flick, and Rubens screamed as Sandra rose with a brilliant red jewel in her hand.

Elazul yanked Ariesa back abruptly. "It's too late… you witch!" He burned with rage, staring at the Jumi prostrate on the ground.

Sandra took advantage of his hesitancy to tear off her veil, revealing the same red hair Ariesa had seen in the Mekiv Caverns and Polpota. "Don't look so angry, Lapis Knight. It's only a piece of rock."

"We aren't pieces of rocks! That's a life in your hand!" Elazul shouted. Ariesa extracted herself from his grasp and slipped neatly into position, gauging the distance between herself and Sandra. If they couldn't get the core back, all was lost for Rubens. "I'll make you regret this!"

Sandra only chuckled, and as Ariesa dove for her, she jumped out of the way with inhuman agility, to land on a stone shelf above. "I'm looking forward to that, Elazul. I'll remind you of it, right before I take your own core." A flash of light, some unknown magic, and she was gone, with Rubens' life source in her hand.

"Dammit!" Elazul cursed, but Ariesa was already kneeling by Rubens' prone body, taking the hand of the dying Jumi in her own. Rubens did indeed seem to have lost sparkle; was that how a Jumi died? Not going at once, just slowly fading away?

Elazul rushed over and bowed his head respectfully, and Rubens waved a hand weakly towards the younger man. "Elazul... don't tell anyone you are a Jumi... they'll hunt you for your core... tell Diana that I wished I had the courage to save us both…" Rubens' body began to dissolve in a mass of red sparks, and in a matter of seconds, nothing remained of the man.

Ariesa felt suddenly empty inside. Elazul only looked murderous.

There they were, the two of them, kneeling in the dirt with no sound but the wind remaining to keep them company. Ariesa didn't know what to say or do, if she should reach a hand out to this man she barely knew. Uncertain, she merely remained still.

Finally, Elazul spoke. "Ariesa... don't tell Pearl about this. It won't make her feel better."

"I wish I could forget myself," she replied.

After a long pause, she asked tentatively, "Who is Diana?"

Elazul did not look up to meet her eyes. "Another of the Lucidia… she was a guardian, and our leader… I think Rubens was her knight, some time ago… The Lucidia were our founders, our leaders."

"So Rubens…"

"Is very old. Was," Elazul corrected himself. Ariesa plopped back and crossed her legs, leaving Elazul on hands and knees in the dirt with his own grief.

"Hello?" a novel female voice spoke.

Ariesa suddenly felt extremely self-conscious and leaped back to her feet, dusting herself off. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Elazul doing the same. A Neko stepped around the corner, accompanied by a cohort of nuns. "I'm Daena," the cat-lady told them, "a defender of the temple."

Ariesa did not know what to say. "Rubens..."

"I know," Daena replied sadly. "We heard too late. A woman who matched the thief's description was sighted fleeing here a short while ago. One of the nuns said she saw Rubens heading this way, going to talk to fairies or something, and... well, it's not hard to put it all together." Daena paused. "We were guarding the temple itself, we told Rubens not to worry about the flames, we figured it was another crazy mage trying to steal some Mana or something, somehow… we were thinking too literally when we heard someone was going to put out the temple's flame… and now…" Daena could not bring herself to finish.

"I'm sorry," was all Ariesa could think of to say.

Daena only nodded. "I will have the sad duty of informing Abbess Matilda. But I am sure she will want to hear the story from the two of you. If you will follow me?" she inquired politely, and turned, tail swishing.

"Wait a minute." Daena paused as Ariesa spoke. "You… you were in Domina, not so long ago, weren't you?"

Daena nodded. "I was. I was going…" She stopped. "Well, I was going to see about a great many things, but… well, there are things you will learn soon enough. If you please?" Ariesa and Elazul followed her and the nuns back down the slope morosely, forming a small, silent procession, down to the Temple of Healing.

--

Pearl met them at the entrance of the Temple. "I was so worried about you, when they said there was a thief spotted in town!" Her voice lowered. "Elazul, was it…"

Elazul nodded yes to her unspoken question. "You should have been more worried for yourself," he chided.

"I've been safe in here, the entire time. There can't possibly be a safer place than the Temple of Healing. Everyone has been quite welcoming."

"Well..." Ariesa nudged Elazul slightly at the impatient switch of Daena's tail. "I supposed all's well now. Next time, I won't leave you behind, though."

"That's fine, but right now, is it okay if I wait for you here?" Pearl asked, and Elazul gave his reluctant nod only after a look from Daena. "I've already chatted with the abbess. I think too many visitors would be tiring on her."

Pearl disappeared into one of the many side rooms of the convent, as Daena led them to a pair of large, delicately worked silver doors, pulling a key from her belt. "The abbess requires absolute silence for her meditation," she explained, "but… she knows if I enter without a summons, it's for a good reason." A small grin crossed Daena's face. "She's known me long enough."

Ariesa wondered how long, really, that was, at her first sight of the abbess. An ancient, wrinkled woman lay on a bed that was only truly a stone slab, with a curve carved into it to provide some semblance of comfort. The high-ceilinged chamber was as silent as a tomb, save for the crackling of two torches on either side.

_The torches Rubens kept_, she thought sadly.

To her surprise, Elazul knelt reverently by the altar, making the sign of the tree against his chest. Somehow, Ariesa could not bring herself to do the same, and was relieved when Daena only nodded forward as well.

The ancient woman did not open her eyes as she spoke. "Jumi," she began. "You have lost another of your kind."

"How did you know, Matilda?" blurted out Diana. "I only learned myself less than an hour ago."

Matilda _did_ open her eyes then, to reveal a bright hazel that belied her age. "Rubens has been here for several decades; he could hardly hide from me who he was. Nor could he hide it when he was taken away. I knew the second she pulled the core from his chest. But I would like to hear more."

Elazul stood then, and related the story, with occasional additions by Ariesa. Matilda listened to their story attentively. "No accident. A hunter, then; we've been hearing the rumors here for weeks, and other news from elsewhere, the same story over and over. So it seems someone wants to hunt the Jumi to extinction."

"And that's why I must find the rest," Elazul replied. "Before it's too late."

Matilda raised her head weakly to regard him. "Would you care for healing?"

Elazul paused awkwardly, unsure of how to respond. "Abbess, I don't think you could give any healing that would help me."

"I suppose so, lapis knight," Matilda replied. "May the Goddess be with you."

Elazul turned to Ariesa, but suddenly both seemed unsure how to wish each other goodbye. She squeezed his hand as she met his gaze. "I'll see you back in Domina?" She did not ask when.

Elazul nodded, then morosely turned to go in that abrupt way of his, leaving Ariesa alone once again in the Temple of Gato.

"And do you wish healing, young woman?" Matilda addressed her. "What is your name?"

"Ariesa," she replied, "and I do."

Matilda pulled herself to ant upright position, shaking slightly, and Daena instinctively reached behind the abbess's back to support her. "You do… but you don't know yet what you need to be healed _from_," she said. "You haven't seen enough, haven't experienced enough, haven't made choices you could regret… so, nothing is there yet for me to heal."

Ariesa felt almost a bit insulted, but swallowed her pride. "What do I do about it?"

Matilda smiled slightly at her response. "Perhaps there is something else I can give you that would help us both. I have a favor to ask."

"What is it?" Ariesa responded a bit warily. The asking was a formality; she did not think she could turn down the High Priestess of Gato.

"Mana is being disrupted everywhere. The Elementals used to dominate our world, and whole days belonged to them. Now, they are lucky to have pockets of influence in small parts of the world… Did you know there used to be seven days in the week?"

"No, I didn't," Ariesa answered truthfully.

"The seventh was the day of the Goddess herself, when she brought balance back to the world… but no longer. The elements run wild, unchecked, and out of balance. I fear… something is going on with the fairies as well. There is much chaos in our world today. Will you go to the Mindas Jungle and try to find out what has been bothering them?"

"I will," Ariesa replied, wondering how she knew such things and what faeries had to do with anything. Useless beings since the wars. It was a simple enough request, and she felt like she owed something to this woman, like she had some responsibility for Rubens' death. "But why the jungle?"

"It's the closest place to the land of the Fairies."

"I'll go with her," popped up Daena.

"You wish this, Daena?" Matilda sighed. "I had hoped to keep you close…"

"I do," Daena said, in a tone that indicated her decision was made. "Something is happening, and I can't just sit by."

"Then go, the two of you," Matilda replied. "Go with the blessings of the Goddess."


	11. Secrets: Seeds

**11. Secrets: Seeds**

Carlie lounged by the trunk of one of the ancient trees in the Forest of Wonder, settling her pale bishop's robes around her. Idly, she plucked at long copper curls that shone against the cream-colored garment. She was one hundred and thirteen years old, barely middle-aged in elf years, but even so, as the time passed there were fewer people and places familiar to her. The forest outside Diorre was one of the only places in the world which never seemed to change, remaining as it always had been; a fact that puzzled many who wondered how it could border Altena and still be absolutely temperate.

Her hands involuntarily played with the object they held, a stone Leroy and Shayla had brought her. An odd, eye-shaped stone that seemed to be looking back at her. It was an artifact, certainly – she could feel the Mana inside it – but as with every such item that she had run across, it was too little to be useful for anything, really. Still, she found it oddly comforting.

It was a slight fluttering in the air that didn't exactly match the breeze that made her open her eyes, to see a curious figure she hadn't expected to see, here or anywhere else. The shock was great enough that she paused for a moment, wondering if her eyes were playing tricks on her; but her memories of nearly a hundred years before didn't lie to her.

It was a fairy.

"That stone… the Mana… it drew me…" she uttered, floating some distance away but looking just as Carlie remembered, small and ethereal.

"Where do you come from?" she exclaimed, and the winged being flitted over to her questioningly.

"You can see me?" the fairy asked. "We show ourselves when we believe we are threatened, but it's very few who can see us on their own. Nowadays, anyway."

"But..." Carlie was still getting over her surprise; it was leaving her feeling tongue-tied. "You shouldn't be here at all! Aren't you supposed to be the seed of the tree? The tree's nothing but a sproutling right now!"

"If only it were that simple," the fairy replied. "Things are not always as they seem, young one. We are the bits of Mana from the Goddess who _will_ be formed, but distorted, incomplete, not unlike the monsters of this world. We can touch Mana, somewhat better than the humans, but we are not truly a part of it any longer. What has changed is not whether or not we exist, but how strongly we are tied to the Goddess."

Carlie pondered that a moment. "So... where does that leave you now?"

The fairy looked morose. "We used to exist in the Goddess's dimension, Her reality overlapping yours, but the pulsations of the two world differing. It made us immortal, untouchable, unless we chose to enter this world, the Tree bridging the gap between worlds.. But we are only barely held by the Goddess now, and we are spilling over into this dimension. We are doomed to be pulled to wherever we feel Mana – the lake, the snowfields, the jungle."

"But who then are the Goddess's heirs?" The picture of the world, and Goddesses old and new, had always seemed so clear to her; new Goddess growing, and once she reached her maturity in another nine hundred-odd years, the fairies would be born anew as her seeds and heirs. She had preached as much for decades; but she had also preached that barriers were breaking. Uncomfortably, she realized the separation between the worlds which the fairy spoke of was just another barrier. It wasn't just barriers that were shattering, but many of her hopes along with it.

The fairy motioned in a circle. "Look around you. You are half elf, and the elves of this forest have always understood that Mana is a part of all living things. Just as we are connected to the Goddess, just as people are connected to the Goddess, so is everything in this forest connected to the Goddess, and as long as there is life in this world, there is a little bit of her left, for she, too, is part of something bigger. The trees and grass miss her, too. Can't you feel it, Priestess?"

Carlie closed her eyes to meditate, and let a long moment pass… it was faint, but once she opened herself to the forest, she could feel it, ever so faintly, the feeling of the Goddess herself.

"The plants," she said, opening her eyes. "They're all connected."

The fairy nodded. "Connection to the Goddess… it may eventually be our only hope. The new Goddess is not fully formed; she is disjointed, indistinct… Few remember her, and so many have forgotten what Mana is really supposed to be. The sorcerers can't touch Mana the way the fairies can, but that doesn't stop them from trying. They grab whatever they can, in whatever artifacts they can find, and they would have us amplify the shards for them."

That triggered something for Carlie, and she recalled the disturbing rumors coming out of Altena the past couple of years. "Artifacts," Carlie replied. "Anise is trying to duplicate them."

The fairy's expression grew dark. "She is," the being confirmed. "But we won't let her."


	12. Legends: Murmurs

**12. Legends: Murmurs**

Ariesa and her new friend trudged through the thick jungle, pushing endless branches out of their way. The lush trees kept all but the most determined out, and kept all the heat and humidity in. For the hundredth time, Ariesa reached up to wipe sweat off her forehead. Daena didn't seem to be doing much better; her fur did not show sweat, but she was drooping slightly. The heat was getting to them both, and it was making conversation difficult.

Not that it stopped them. It had been a week now that she had spent with the cat-woman, and after the relative silence of Elazul, she found it refreshing to converse with another female. Daena was bright, determined, and knowledgeable, and when they weren't joking together, Daena was happy to fill in the blanks for Ariesa as far as the history of the fairies went.

"There was so much history lost in the wars," Daena told her, with a tinge of regret. "Gato tries to keep records as much as it can, it's probably the safest place to store such things, but the history we have is so... fragmented. Most of the history books are wrong. No one really knows anymore what the old kingdoms were like."

"The days when the Mana Tree stood," Ariesa spoke with wonder. "Before it burned in the war."

Daena looked at her. "Actually, that's one of the great myths. Everyone believes the tree was destroyed in the war against Anise nine hundred years ago, but this is one of the only things we know for sure. It died _before_ then."

"Before then?" Ariesa repeated back, puzzled.

Daena nodded. "A thousand years ago. Part of me wonders if there was ever any such thing, but by the time Anise got there, it was already a dead stump." She adopted a vaguely lecturing tone. "Anise wanted to be a great sorceress, but there wasn't enough Mana in the artifacts that were being found. She went to the Holyland to find the place a burned-out wreck, the Goddess having died a hundred years before. Still, she was able to find things there that had some Mana left from the old Goddess, faded residues. That Mana couldn't be brought back, because that Goddess was dead. First, she tried to get fairies to amplify it for her, then she tried to duplicate them on her own, and finally, in a desperate last resort, she dipped into the magic of the Underworld."

"The Underworld…" The name sent a tinge of nervousness down Ariesa's spine. "Where the dead stop over if they are not ready to pass on."

"It was something even more than that, back then," Daena answered. "Not a place for humans, living or dead, but something… in another dimension altogether, it is said."

"In the way the Goddess is said to be in another dimension?"

"Something like that. We're not really sure _how_ the Goddess died, but it is said the Underworld was involved." Daena shrugged. "Of course, I've never been to the Underworld, then or now, and I don't really get how it could have changed. So I figure that part at least could be pure myth. Who knows?"

"Well, however it happened, that's why Mana is disappearing from the world, right?"

Daena looked at her rather pointedly. "Another myth. It's not decreasing, but many think it is, because it's increasingly… turbulent, I guess would be the best description. It bothers Matilda immensely; she is very worried about what it might mean." Her voice grew soft. "I do not think Matilda will live long enough to find out… that's what I went to Domina for, to see the Wisdom, Gaues."

"Gaues. The living hill. I've heard he's off a branch of the Luon Highway, but I've never been down that far… it's through Ariesa Canyon, right?"

Daena's face fell. "It is… Ariesa, I was so scared to go. It's frightening to get that much wisdom, wisdom from a thousand years ago, and earlier. It's the sort of thing that… you sometimes wonder if there are things you would be happier if you didn't know?"

"I don't think there's a way to avoid learning some things," Ariesa said, putting one hand on her friend's arm soothingly. "If you ignore them, they'll just catch up with you anyway."

"Maybe." Daena abruptly switched from that line of discussion. "There's supposed to be a Wisdom in the jungle as well. Rosiotti. They call him Lord of the Beasts. And he is, at least the ones found in this forest…"

Daena chattered on, but Ariesa was only really listening with one ear, suddenly plunged into her own thoughts. _A thousand years ago, the tree died. Not in the war._ She had always been taught the war was over the tree, but... if it was already gone? What did that mean for the war? And what did that mean for the Goddess?

"Look!" Daena's voice suddenly pierced her thoughts.

Ariesa's head automatically swiveled to where the other woman pointed, and at first she almost missed the flickering light in the trees. But after a second, it became more pronounced, drifting towards them and resolving into a small being Ariesa had not seen before; nevertheless, it was easy enough to figure out what it was. A fairy. Just what they had come to check out.

"What brings you here?" the being inquired, the small voice sounding irritated.

Ariesa thought quickly. "The Wisdom."

The Fairy nodded. "Rosiotti. Just up ahead, and to the right. You'd best be careful, though. Groups of fairies that oppose the humans have begun to appear." She paused. "They might not let you pass on as easily as I did."

They thanked the fairy for the warning, and proceeded onward as she disappeared back into the trees. "That sort of answers one of our questions," Ariesa observed to her companion.

Daena nodded. "Many faeries feel hatred towards mankind, since the wars. It's really not surprising. But why is Matilda so interested in the fairies?"

Ariesa contemplated that. "There must be more to it, don't you think?"

Daena nodded firmly in agreement. "I think so, but I'm not sure what. I feel like Matilda is not telling me everything, and I wonder what I am missing."

"Well…" Ariesa suggested tentatively, "perhaps we can stop and see the Wisdom? I mean, shouldn't he be able to answer questions like that? If we made the trip all the way out here, why not take advantage of the fact?" By way of response, Daena pointed down the trail the fairy had pointed out to them, and they turned to follow it.

The fairy's directions led them to a small clearing where the trees seemed to hold back to make room for the remnants of clearly-ancient stone buildings. Ariesa ran one finger over the stone wall at her side, the rocks crumbling where time and rain had not worn them smooth. "What city was this?" she wondered.

"Pedan," came a booming voice from behind.

Both young women turned with a start to see a large beast, something like a lion but with vaguely humanoid features framed by its red and white mane, ambling unconcerned towards them. The beast opened its mouth to speak, and she jumped as a perfectly human voice came out. "Or Mindas, if you wish. They changed the name during the wars, when it turned from a place of learning to a staging area for war." He swung his head, across the ruins. "Now, it is nothing, but ruins that the forest is trying to reclaim."

"Wisdom Rosiotti," Daena greeted him in a respectful tone. Ariesa settled for just a quiet incline of her head forward, tugging on her clothes self-consciously. "We have a question for you. We are trying to figure out what is upsetting the fairies in the forest." Briefly, she sketched out the story.

Rosiotti listened in an interested way. "The fairies," he mused, his voice low and rumbling. "Troublemakers once again. It wasn't enough that we dealt with them in war after war. Anuella sided with them, and I know why she did, but I can't really believe in them, myself. Far too capricious." He regarded Daena rather intently. "Their dislike of humans has been going on forever, but… now, you say something's changed. I have sensed it some myself… it is as if they have a new direction, whereas they so often floated aimlessly before, bereft of their Goddess connection. I wonder if something… or someone… has happened to change their world?"

"Some _one_?" Daena asked. "A new leader? Not impossible."

Rosiotti nodded. "They haven't had a leader in centuries. Allies, yes, but no true leader since Aion, and he died in the War of the Tree. Perhaps they want someone to tell them what to do? It's an opening for someone to take advantage of, and it could mean trouble. You had better be careful; if they suspect you, they'll send you right back outside of the forest. They can do that pretty easily here, with all the Mana left here from Pedan."

"We'll chance it," Daena replied, as they turned to leave.

Heeding the Wisdom's warning, Ariesa and Daena crept stealthily through the forest, watching for the telltale lights in the bushes. Now that they knew what they were looking for, they saw them _everywhere_, it seemed, and a cluster of what appeared to be several up ahead. Ariesa motioned to Daena, and together they inched forwards, careful to remain hidden by the vegetation.

They were surprised at what they found.

"A Gato nun?!" Daena whispered angrily. "What is she doing here? And what are they doing to her?" She moved as if to break out towards the woman in question, and Ariesa hurriedly grabbed her arm.

"Wait, Daena!" she cautioned. Her friend settled down, leaving them to observe in secrecy.

The nun lay prone in the clearing, and groaned as if she was unable to get up. Surrounding her was a flock of fairies, their nearly-invisible wings creating a faint hum in the air as they buzzed around the nun, clearly agitated.

One spoke, and the other fairies calmed some. "This won't do. This nun just wandered into the forest by accident, she has no real powers."

"We have to take what we can find. How else will we find someone strong enough to be our queen?" another inquired, sounding almost affronted.

"We'll have to try something else." The tiny face of the first, the apparent leader, grew hard. "Bring the priestess of Gato's temple! That's the one Lord Irwin really wants."

"Matilda!" Daena whispered urgently, and Ariesa instinctively pulled her down again before Daena could blow their cover.

"Why has Lord Irwin chosen a human to be our queen?" one fairy asked incredulously.

"That's for him to know," replied the first.

That was as far as the discussion got before a young man suddenly barged into the clearing, long silvery-white hair flailing. The fairies scattered like flies as the man swung a sword viciously but with skill through their ranks, and high-pitched fairy screams cut through the clearing as they barely avoided the blows, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

The young man stood there with sword raised, breathing heavily, looking around at his sudden absolute lack of prey and perhaps wanting something else to take out his wrath on. "Damned fairies..." he cursed. "When did they become Irwin's henchmen?"

"Could it be... Escad?" Daena suddenly cried out, and this time Ariesa was not quick enough to stop her before she impulsively bound forward, leaving Ariesa with no choice but to crash through the undergrowth after her.

The young man turned to the two women with a toss of his hair, and an angry cast that seemed as if it was permanently worn on his features. Green clothes, nearly as bright as his aqua eyes, stretched over bulging, well-built muscles, and his vest left his arms and part of his chest bare. "Daena," he greeted her warily, but lowered his heavy, two-handed broadsword.

"Escad. I never thought I'd see you again," she replied, but turned first to the nun, who was rising somewhat shakily. "Are you alright?"

"It's good to see you, Daena," the woman replied. "I'm fine, thank you, I thought I broke my ankle when those fairies swarmed upon me, but I think it's only sprained. I will walk back to Rosiotti, and rest there." Gingerly she tested her weight, then took a few steps forward, passing Ariesa.

The nun had spoken with the confidence of someone older, but as Ariesa caught a glimpse of the eyes visible above the veil that otherwise covered most of her face, she was startled to see that the woman was, in fact, rather young. Ariesa wondered what had drawn her to the jungle. "Wait!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing way out here, anyway?"

The nun stopped and turned to her, expression unreadable under that veil. "Probably the same thing as you. Wondering what will happen next."

Escad nodded curtly to the departing nun, before returning his attention to Daena. "You'd better leave. The fairies are massing. I think they are looking to start yet another war with humans."

Daena lifted her abbreviated feline nose imperiously. "Not until you tell me more. Matilda sent us to find out what was happening with the fairies. Why would they want to start a war _now_?"

"Matilda?" Hurt crossed Escad's features, then disappeared so quickly Ariesa wasn't certain she had seen it at all. "How is she?"

"She is... well," Daena replied, her tone implying some hidden meaning to the exchange. Ariesa was, frankly, getting tired of things going over her head. "Now, answer the question."

Escad relaxed slightly. "Well, apparently Irwin has lived in the land of the fairies for the past ten years."

"Irwin?" Daena replied. "That certainly would explain a few things."

"Who's Irwin?" Ariesa asked, curiosity finally getting the better of her.

Two pairs of eyes turned to her, as if they had forgotten she was there. Escad was the first to speak. "He has the blood of a demon in him. He's already become the king of the faeries, somehow, and he won't rest until he is the king of both worlds. I've been trying to track down the fairies here for days," he gestured with a wide sweep of the arm to the jungle around, "and they all say the same thing – 'Lord Irwin this, Lord Irwin that, Lord Irwin will destroy the humans for us and conquer their world.' Bah."

"All of us grew up together - Escad and I, Matilda, and Irwin," Daena added. "Matilda was born into the Halloway family of priests, and Escad comes from the Liotte family of knights. My family has served the temple as guards for generations. Irwin… well, he always told us he was part demon, but I'm not really sure _what_ to think about that."

"What else would he be?! Irwin tried to kidnap Matilda, and stole her elemental powers," Escad continued.

"That's not true! She followed him willingly!" Daena protested.

Escad glared at her. "And look how he rewarded her devotion." Daena seemed momentarily chastened, and he continued. "I followed them to the mines, but it was I who ended up falling into the Underworld."

"The Underworld?" Daena exclaimed, suddenly concerned. "That's where you have been?"

They shared a look and Escad only nodded. "I didn't die, Daena, if that's what you're thinking. But I found… a teacher… and he kept me there to teach me the way of the sword, until he felt I was ready to return."

"If you could go to the underworld alive, would you?" Ariesa quoted. "You may fall to the underworld, if you're in low spirits."

They both looked at her quizzically. "Huh?" asked Daena.

"It's from the poet, Pokiehl," Ariesa replied.

Escad put one hand to his chin to look at her pensively. "You're interesting. Who is this, Daena?" Daena hurriedly made the introduction, and Escad mused for a moment. "Perhaps we can travel together sometime. I can make you a hero."

Ariesa gave him a bemused smile back. "I don't want to be a hero."

"Whatever. Well, in any case, we shall meet again. Goodbye, Daena," he addressed the other woman with a bare nod, before turning to disappear into the murmuring forest.

--

"Where are we going next, Elazul?" Pearl asked, those big, blue-gray eyes looking to him for answers.

It was a sunny, peaceful day, and they were lounging in Domina's Mana Angel Park, he leaning against the fountain while she sat in the shade on the bench. The sun struck his core, making it a pleasantly warm knob of sensation.

He wished, just once, he had an answer to give her of which he was certain. They had been back in Domina for about a week, and he had not the slightest idea where to go. All the leads they had were pretty well exhausted… well, except for the rumors about Geo, but he wasn't ready to start chasing that one quite yet. He didn't have such fond memories of the desert that he was eager to go back.

_Well, except for one memory,_ he thought, looking back at Pearl. She was patiently waiting, and he knew he had to say _something_.

"I was thinking…" he began, and as soon as he said those words he realized exactly what he had been thinking. "I was thinking perhaps we need a more permanent place to stay. You know, someplace to return to."

Pearl contemplated that. "Judd was nice, right on the Royal Coastline. All those sunny beaches, blue water…" She sighed in contentment.

"It's a major port, Pearl," he reminded her. "It's not the safest place. We need someplace a little more isolated, where we can more or less escape notice." She turned to meet his eye and he could tell he had her interest now. "I was thinking… we could just as well stay here, get out of the inn. There's a house for rent, right in the center of town, a two-bedroom thing. A bit expensive, so it's still open."

"I saw that one," she told him. "It looked nice. And we know people here, too. That reminds me, I wonder if Ariesa's back? We haven't seen her in a while."

Elazul had almost forgotten about her, he realized suddenly, in his grief over Rubens and worry for Pearl. The realization made him feel a bit guilty. "Perhaps we should stroll down and say hello, then? Especially if she is going to be our neighbor, sort of."

Forty minutes and a handful of directions later found them knocking on the door of an odd, rustic treehouse. _So this is where she lives,_ pondered Elazul. _Quaint, homey, and relatively isolated._

A young boy's voice was heard from behind the door. "Who's there?" it asked.

"Um, is this Ariesa's house?" Elazul asked, confused.

"She's not home," the voice said. "Go away."

"Could we leave her a message then, please?" Pearl asked the door. There was no sound for a moment, then suddenly the door crashed open, and Elazul suddenly recognized the boy in the doorway. _Ariesa's apprentices._ He had only met them briefly, and they had dropped from his mind even more than she had.

The boy – Bud, it was? – remembered them, however. One of them, anyway. "Pearl!" he exclaimed. "What brings you by?"

"Bud, don't be rude, invite them in," came a girl's voice. Elazul stuck his head in briefly, to see the boy's twin sister – Lisa, he thought? – walking towards the door, all seriousness.

She paused on the sight of the Jumi. "Oh, hi," she greeted them, with less wariness than her brother. "Ariesa's not here, but please, come inside."

Elazul stepped across the doorstep with a splash of trepidation, Pearl following behind him as she always did. It wasn't fear, just simple discomfort at being in Ariesa's house while she was away. "So she's not back yet?" he inquired.

Lisa chose to respond. "She said she was going to try and find the two of you in Gato…" She left the statement open. "What happened?"

Elazul sank into a chair, Pearl emulating him, but first stopping to adjust her dress gracefully. "I think… I think she's still there, or thereabouts. Matilda seemed interested in her."

"Matilda? Who'zat?" asked Bud, leaping onto a chair opposite.

"The High Priestess of Gato," Elazul replied, suddenly finding himself incredibly unwilling to get further into the details. Bud seemed inclined to press, but Lisa shushed him.

"When is she coming back?" asked Lisa, politely, setting out refreshments.

Elazul exchanged a glance with Pearl. "I don't know, exactly," he admitted. "She didn't tell me everything she was up to."

Lisa and Bud exchanged a glance he could not interpret.

"Really, I don't!" Elazul protested, wondering why he was so defensive.

Lisa spoke up first. "It's not a big deal, Elazul, we know she does her own thing." She reached over the table to refill his glass. "We're glad to see you."

Pearl had been quiet through the entire exchange, looking around the airy first floor. "This is a really great house… so comfortable and warm. You're okay without her?"

Bud puffed up slightly. "We can take care of ourselves, Lisa and I."

"Well…" Elazul began. "If you do need anything… I think Pearl and I are going to be in town for a while still, if you want to stop by. That's what we were coming down here to tell Ariesa. Maybe you could let us know when she gets back?"

"I'll come by!" said Bud enthusiastically.

"We'll make sure you know," Lisa said, a bit more calmly. "Feel free to stop by here as well." Elazul wondered about the two of them – they looked to be only twelve or thirteen, but they a little extra confidence, a slightly larger splash of maturity than he would have expected at that age.

Then again, he himself was somewhat older than he looked, and he had definitely seen altogether too much.


	13. Secrets: Mana

**13. Secrets: Mana**

Anuella sat forlornly in the fading winter sunshine, gazing over the nearly abandoned Altenan countryside.

She couldn't quite trace how she ended up where she was today. When had Fate begun to turn for her? She would have liked to believe it was the Goddess setting her path, but unfortunately, she had the knowledge of a mage, and that meant she knew better.

Ultimately, it was all the fault of her mother. Anise had been an intimidating and driven woman, who, since Anuella's childhood, had seemed to be almost wholly inside her own head, lust for power taking over whatever values she might have once had. For the life of her, she couldn't figure out how her mother had ever agreed to marry her father.

Her father had been a prince of Rolante, a royal match, if a minor one. Truthfully, princes had never been so important in Rolante anyway. But in a declining country like Altena, beggars could not be choosers, and Anise was not in the line of descent for the throne herself, being the daughter of Fairia's second child. They were both great-granddaughters of Angela, but it was Anise's cousin who had inherited the throne of Altena and the title "Queen of Reason", a title rapidly becoming empty.

Maybe she would never know why her mother accepted such an arranged marriage. But at first, she had been told, there seemed to be love between the two.

Over time, Anuella had been born, and she had first been given the name Elise. Her mother had picked the name. It sounded a bit like her own, and at the same time was a version of the name of the legendary Rolantic queen, Lise.

But her father had insisted she have a second name, as all queens of Rolante did, a royal name and an Amazon name. She had little claim to the throne of her father's country, but it was the tradition that counted, and her ancestry. He suggested Anuella, in the new style of Rolante's royal names. Why they did not compromise and name, she would never know. But her mother hated that second name.

Perhaps it was not surprising that she only used that name now.

Love was never what mattered most to her mother. It was power. And sixty years ago, she had created bridges to the Holyland to create the Eyes of Flame from the scorched wreckage left there by Angela, the day the Ancient Goddess had died.

The new Goddess was a bare sprout of a tree, but Anuella had no doubt that Anise would have uprooted the sapling itself, had she been able to get to it. She was somewhat mad already, and desperate to find whatever magic she could, even if it meant killing the new Goddess before she was born. The barrier that had kept mortals from the Holyland in the time of the Ancient Goddess had weakened enough for her mother to break it a hundred years later – yet she still found a barrier harder than any Mana Stone around the budding tree.

What she _did_ find was that the shattered remains of the Holyland of the old Goddess, the dead Goddess, had power of their own. Little did she know the power was corrupted by death; perhaps she would not have cared. From those faded, dead bits of Mana, she tried to copy the artifacts that could occasionally be found, but wouldn't accept that they did not have the power she wanted. She went to their fairies, asking them to amplify the Mana, and was refused. In desperation, she turned to the last source she could find – the magic of the Underworld.

The magic of the Underworld was not Mana; it had always been known as the magic of demons, the magic of death, but with Anise's treasures, they… resonated, fed off each other, doom and decay combining to create something never seen before. These, she called the Eyes of Flame, and they were more powerful than she could have imagined, nearly as powerful as the old Mana Stones, and nearly impossible to control. They infected their mistress, hastening her progressing insanity.

She had been traveling back to the Holyland to try to crack the Tree's barrier with her creations when the forces of Aion, king of the fairies, set upon her and her cadre of mages. At first it was a slaughter, Anise's power decimating the fairies, until reinforcements from Forcena arrived to drive her out in a series of battles that doused the Holyland in blood.

The Fairies were able to destroy the Eyes of Flame, but Anise had escaped. It took them another fifty years to find her, and to this day, ten years later, all Anuella had ever been able to find out was that it was the seventh moon that killed her. Whatever that meant.

She no longer remembered much of her mother; she didn't even look much like her. Anuella was tall and, as she saw it, scrawny. She had been told she had inherited some of the famed Altenan royal beauty, as Anise did, but frankly, she never saw it; only her violet hair tied her to her heritage at all. And with all that had happened, she had little feeling for that heritage as well, it leaving a sour taste in her mouth. It shamed her, and it made her ashamed of herself for being of that blood; truly, she thought very little of herself at all.

Except with one person.

A whistle interrupted her thoughts, the signal Selva always used to get her attention. She looked up to see the small red-headed man approach, his clownish grin covering his face as it always did. It never failed to make her smile as well.

Selva of the Four Winds, as he was sometimes called for his Rolantic roots, had been her lover for years, though sometimes he seemed a surprising choice. A good four inches shorter, for one. But he was a bit of a dreamer as well, endlessly chatting with the birds of the forest, who somehow seemed to understand him and speak back. Perhaps they were not such an odd couple after all.

He was younger than her as well, though she was not sure he knew how much, or why. It was the one thing she had learned from her mother that she had used herself - how to extend her life. It was a dirty trick, from filthy Underworld magic, and she was sure she would have to pay the price for it eventually. But she had felt she had too much to do, too many things that needed to be accomplished, to consider otherwise.

"How goes the artifacts?" he greeted her with a quick, teasing kiss on the nose.

"It would go faster if they stopped bothering me," Anuella said, motioning to the cluster of bedraggled teenagers that huddled around the campfire some distance away. They tolerated the cold much more poorly than Anuella did, and if she had not wanted secrecy, she would have never brought them all the way up here to the Northern Peaks.

"Easy, Anuella," Selva replied. "Those are your students, and this is your school, of sorts. They want to learn whatever they can of Mana, same as you do," he said, pointing to her lap.

Anuella looked at the green cane she was working on. She knew what it did, though she hadn't yet decided what to use it for. It might not look like much, no more than the dolls she made that some called her "puppets", but she knew the things she made were of pure Mana.

They did not have the power of her mother's creations, but that was just as well. Anise could not handle the chaotic power she had unleashed, and it was her undoing, but Anuella kept her own constructions very well ordered to avoid her mother's fate. The death magic her mother had used had given her Eyes of Flame a sort of life of their own, ironically, but what she did was much safer; the powers were subtle, hidden, but they were there. Selva helped her coax them into existence, and though it might not be much in a world lacking in Mana, it was enough.

She lifted the item, critically examining it from all sides. Her students called her the Artificer, and lauded her for making something from nothing, taking mundane objects with no Mana to them, and somehow bringing them to life in a dozen ways. She made different sorts of things; whimsically construed dolls that lived on as animals or people, or imitations of the artifacts one could sometimes find. The staff she was working on was of the latter sort. Wendel Silver reinforced with Lorimar iron, shells, hemp from Judd, ankh rocks from the heavens - it all came together under her touch.

He reached down at first, it seemed, for the cane, but took her hand in his instead as he sat beside her. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and closed her eyes, pushing her work out of her mind as he silently wrapped an arm around her.

--

The fairies had been the ones to teach her to make the instruments, approaching her cautiously one day in the snowfields.

She felt their presence even before she saw them out of the corner of her eye, creeping towards her from all directions, their wingbeats stirring chilled breezes in the still air. She tried to remain nonchalant as not to scare them off, even as they formed a circle around her, at which point she finally raised her eyes to meet theirs.

True, she had been seeing fairies for some time in the area, probably attracted to the residual Mana that still permeated the Altenan landscape. The power of the land would have attracted her itself, had it not been her home, for better or for worse. But she had never before seen them so close, and she was taken with a sense of profound respect for the seeds of the Goddess.

They regarded her silently for a long time, until finally one spoke. "We have been watching what you are doing," it told her.

Anuella remained silent, examining the newcomers with interest. She let her current project rest in her lap.

"This is… something different from what we thought we would see," a second told her. "This is not what Anise did."

"I am not my mother," Anuella replied simply.

"So we can tell," another replied. "We are glad to see it. We think you can be trusted, and there is something we wish to show you. Hold that up," she said, gesturing to the item in Anuella's hands.

She was startled by this show of trust from the fairies, but did as she was told. It was a flute she had been making, and she had barely begun to infuse it with Mana, unsure of what she wanted to do with it. Perhaps she had just wanted to make something pleasant.

"Now feed the Mana into it," the Fairy directed.

"But how? What kind?" Anuella asked, puzzled.

"Doesn't matter, just Mana. We will amplify it for you." Anuella was ever more surprised, but gently, she let it flow through her. It seemed as if she could already softly hear the music the flute would make. Slowly, the melody rose, filling her, and she could feel the Mana pulling from around, the forgotten Mana of a dying country. The song filled her head, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt suffused with a pure joy.

The moment seemed to drag forever, until finally the song came to an end, the last note hanging rapturously in the air. She was sorry to see it go.

In her hand, the flute pulsed with some of that energy still. She looked at the fairies questioningly.

"It calls to the Elementals themselves," one told her, "the reticent elementals that are in hiding. But they will hear this, and remember, wherever you are. It will allow you to touch Mana in a way you could not before. Not much now, perhaps, but over time, it will become stronger, until the Goddess and the elementals return and it is not needed anymore."

Anuella was reverent. She only spoke one word. "Why?"

The fairies adopted all the same expression of sadness. "Because it is needed," the leader spoke. "Because things are not done. Because we cannot do it on our own."

The words gave Anuella chills, remembering the slaughter that had been the Holyland when the fairies battled her mother, until the humans had joined. "We have to work together, don't we?"

The fairy nodded. "We are all part of Mana. We have trusted you with our secret, will you trust us as well?"

Anuella remembered that one moment of joy, and it gave her the first hope she had in a long time for the future, for what might be. "I will," she told them.

--

The instruments proceeded well. Her students picked up on the skill quickly, and the fairies continued to complete them; in fact, the fairies flitting through the snowy camp were now a commonplace sight.

It gave her hope, yes, but she was beginning to wonder if it would be enough. Rumors had begun of the mages, scattered by her mother's death, beginning to mass once again.

The fairies had been right. It was not done.

It made her angry, after all the years of fighting, to feel as if they were at the beginning once again, and to feel that pure Mana would not be enough.

Certainly she had been angry when she started making this doll. What other force could have possessed her to put slivers of the Eyes of Flame in the doll's eyes? Shattered bits of her mother's weapons, to be sure, but there was that twisted power in them nevertheless.

She put the finishing touches on the doll, and she began to feel its power immediately, it seeming to breath in her hands. It had more power than anything she had made before, but whether that was a good or a bad thing, she did not yet know.

A fairy flitted by, a small blue thing that looked just like all the others except for the minor differences in coloration that allowed her to tell them apart. _Fiorentina_, she thought this one's name was. "Whatever are you doing?" she asked Anuella, a bit agitated.

Anuella looked down at the doll. "I don't know," she replied, a bit sadly.

"I don't like it," Fiorentina shuddered. "It's the sort of thing the mages will come for soon enough."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Believe me, I know," the fairy replied. "I saw it… we all did… the mages with Anise, greedy for anything they could sense…" The mention of her mother's name gave Anuella chills that had nothing to do with the weather. "Take it somewhere, take it away, please!"

Anuella closed her eyes, and she realized, Fiorentina was right. The mages… she could already feel them, somehow… they looking for the doll… it calling to them. It was only a matter of time…

--

"You gave a little girl the doll?" Anuella shrieked.

"It was to keep it safe," Selva defended. "Just like you said, a mage crept right into our camp looking for it. No one would look for it in the hands of a little girl in a cottage in the middle of the mountains."

"The doll will destroy her! It has a mind of its own!" Anuella sank to her knees, to hear herself laughing maniacally. It wasn't Selva's fault. It was her fault, to have created a doll that could be used for destruction. "My mother," she forced out between hysterics. "She would do anything to get any bit of the Eyes back still. What was I thinking? My mother is greedy still!"

Selva had knelt beside her. "Anuella, your mother is long gone. She was pursued, found, and killed, remember? No one doubts it is true."

Anuella shook he head violently. "Maybe her body is dead, but... her soul... it's still here, still trying to shape things, through the mages that pursue the Eyes still. As long as Mana is scarce, she will be here, and I can feel her fingers sometimes, almost closing around my neck..."

She hadn't realized how tightly she had been gripping Selva's arms until she heard the chirps of the Lilipeas; they were extraordinarily sensitive to negative feelings. She had made them that way. The small, fuzzy pink creatures clustered around her, trying to soothe her with their presence. It helped, a little.

She caught Selva's look. He said nothing, but he didn't need to, the disapproval was clear enough, and she knew what he was thinking. She was helping no one this way.

Anuella released her grip, to crumple into sobs on the floor. "I wanted to make something... something that would create, would keep... but it all breaks in the end." She motioned to a broken doll in the corner, a failed creation that she never had the courage to throw away. "If the Goddess was still with us, but..."

"...We don't know if she's ever coming back," Selva finished. "That's why we have to find our own wisdom, somehow."

Wisdom. That clicked something for her. "You're right," she told him. "You're right..."


	14. Legends: Truth

**14. Legends: Truth**

There was no shortage of conversation on the way back to Gato. Ariesa's head was positively swimming with fairy-ness, trying to figure it all out. What _were_ the fairies doing?

Daena didn't have many answers herself. "What does Irwin have to do with it all?" she mused, before answering her own question. "Irwin... always ready to take power, wherever he could find it, like when he stole Matilda's powers. " Ariesa had no idea what she was talking about and remained silent while Daena descended into one-sided deathly ruminations on how Irwin probably thought he _could_ take over the world.

As they climbed the windy paths once again to the Temple of Healing, Ariesa felt a chill once again, thinking of Rubens. They had stayed for his memorial, a small but touching ceremony, before leaving for the jungle; but now, with that over, the place was truly empty of his presence. She turned to find a similar expression on her new friend's face, morose compassion in a strange juxtaposition.

They entered the temple to find a commotion, nuns scurrying around in an agitated manner, paying no attention to their temple's own protector, until Daena put herself in the path of one of them, a younger woman who let out an "Eek!" finding the cat-woman in her path.

"What's happened here?" Daena demanded.

"Madam... It's Matilda's old friend... Escad, his name was? He appeared here not an hour ago."

Daena gave no answer but marched towards the dreamweaving room, tail twitching in a gesture that Ariesa had already learned to recognize as agitation.

--

_The dreamweaving room_, they called it, but the man that shared the space with Matilda at this moment wondered if it ever gave her anything besides nightmares.

Escad clenched his sword by the stone bier that served as Matilda's bed. How could they leave her to such a spartan setting? The two torches with their crackling flames were the only things that broke either the gloom or the silence.

It looked like a funeral bier, and that bothered him ever more, because the beautiful young woman he remembered now looked on the edge of death herself. Strange, he thought. He was the one who lived in the Underworld for ten years, yet he looked his twenty-nine years just as if he had lived on the surface. Yet he had no doubt about who it was; her eyes revealed everything, just as when he saw her last.

_That damned Irwin_. Then again, what was a demon if not damned? A splinter of pain shot through him, thinking of how she might be today if she had not loved Irwin, had stayed to love him instead. He pushed the thought down, to that hard knot of hate he reserved for every time he thought of Irwin. _One day, it would be time._

And she missed the demon still. Sick.

"Escad!" she had exclaimed as he entered the room, in that high, musical voice he remembered in his head as associated with that youthful doll-like face he had seen last. "I had always hoped you were alive… I had tried so hard not to give up on two precious friends I thought I had lost, and my faith has been rewarded, for one has come back to me."

_Two precious friends_. Himself... and Irwin.

"You should thank the Goddess that demon has not come back for you. Stop thinking about him!" he found himself responding harshly, as the ball of hate sparked within him. "You still don't see, do you? He only ever cared about your powers, and his own ambitions, and look what has become of it!"

Matilda looked hurt for a moment, a girlish expression, and Escad reminded himself that despite it all, she was still only twenty-six. "Please... Escad... don't say such hurtful things… I'm not as unhappy as you think..."

He turned away, not trusting himself to say something reasonable back, then scolded himself on the inside. After all this time, he really should be more civil to the girl he had known since childhood. Carefully, he contemplated what he should say.

Escad hadn't reached any conclusions when he was distracted by the sudden slam of a door, and was not entirely surprised to see Daena, accompanied by the sprite-girl - Ariesa, her name was? - that had been with her in the forest. They must have been only a short ways behind him - as much as he had rushed to get here, if he had not run into all the monsters he had, he would been able to get to Gato sooner. So bet it, then, they were here now.

"Daena," he greeted her cordially. "Is this wise, to bring an outsider into our affairs?"

Daena only shrugged. And she had called _him _thoughtless and impulsive. "Matilda trusted her. She will know everything soon enough."

Perhaps he could talk some sense into the other girl, at least, and he turned to give her his attention instead. "You don't know what you are getting yourself into. There's a demon from the Underworld after the abbess," he told her, motioning to Matilda. Ariesa remained quietly pensive. "I would recommend you leave, unless you think you are worthy, in which case this is your chance to make your name known to all."

"Why do you keep telling me things like that?" she replied, fixing him with a challenging expression. "I don't care one way or another." He didn't really have a good answer for that, just the odd sense of fate he had developed in the Underworld, even if the same place had made him so scornful of fate now.

"Everyone wants to be a hero," he told her. "They all have reasons, but deep down, the reasons don't matter."

Daena hissed in her feline way. "Is this what you have become, Escad? Anything for power, for recognition?"

He only glared at her slightly. "Is there anything else?"

"Haven't you said enough?" Daena broke in sharply. "I want you to leave. Now."

"It's not enough!" Escad cried, slashing his sword through empty air for effect. "I have learned the way of the sword from Olbohn, the Wisdom of Darkness! I will kill that demon as the Wisdoms know must happen!"

"Swords, always men and swords!" Daena cried back. "You think that is the only way?!"

"Escad! Daena! Please!" Both turned as one at the sound of Matilda's voice. "I am overjoyed to find both you and Irwin are alive. Isn't that enough?"

"Maybe for you." Escad put careful neutrality in his voice. "But not for me. Beware of him, I'm warning you."

He wheeled to leave the room, and with a silent prayer to Wisp, swore not to return until Irwin was dead.

--

Ariesa exhaled sharply. "That's one intense guy, huh?"

Daena leaned against one of the pillars. "You have absolutely no idea." Standing up to Escad had really taken it out of her, she thought to herself, and schooling herself to calm with Temple exercises, she reminded herself that she was no longer the thirteen-year-old girl who had berated a nineteen-year old man after Irwin and Matilda had fled.

As always, Matilda seemed to know what she was thinking as she sighed. "Escad and Irwin… That was then, but it seems nothing has changed. Ten years I have been free of this problem, only to find it has not gone away at all."

Ariesa leaned against the opposing pillar with the casual nonchalance that covered everything that was going on in her head. "What happened ten years ago?"

Daena looked for Matilda's nod before beginning. It was Matilda's story, but if her old friend wanted her to tell, she knew the story almost as well as Matilda herself. She cleared her throat, and began.

"Matilda didn't want to be a priestess, even though the Halloway family had been dedicated to it for centuries. Everyone saw her as someone she was not. Escad, as well, saw her as his dream woman after growing up together, but really, it was only Irwin who saw her as she really was." Her audience leaned forward, hanging on every word.

"No one in this world cares what race you are, after all the mixing that's happened over the past few centuries." She was mostly Neko herself, but her ancestors had mixed plenty with the other races. "But even so many could not see past Irwin's demon blood, or whatever his odd heritage was; that, was unusual, and I still do not know where it was from. I wonder if it had been anyone else Matilda had left with, would Escad have reacted the same?

"Matilda fled to the mines with Irwin. Maybe he though they could be safe in the Underworld, who knows, but Escad followed them. It was Escad, however, who ended up falling in the Underworld."

_Maybe he was in low spirits_, thought Ariesa, shivering. It had just been a bit of poetry before, but now it was kind of freaking her out.

"Irwin escaped," Daena continued, "and Matilda returned here. If only Escad had left well enough alone... he's the one who started this..." She fumed, and stopped to push her anger down.

"Enough," Matilda said gently. "Past is past. Let us meditate together to let the pain wash away."

Daena allowed herself to shut her eyes dreamily, as their guest did the same. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the temple's nuns entering the room. She sunk into a place free of thoughts.

Then everything happened at once.

--

Lightning-quick, Ariesa saw the nun punch Daena in the stomach, she crumpling under the blow. Ariesa snapped to attention, but the woman was faster. And strong. Matilda was a slight woman, but the mystery assailant scooped her up like nothing. _Who was she_, Ariesa wondered, _to have such super human strength?_

Ariesa whipped out her sword, but the woman was already out the door. She ran into the hallway, scaring the holy women of the temple as she brandished her weapon in the middle of the most sacred spot of Gato.

Before shock could fully set in, however, she hear the voice of the now-recovered Daena behind her. "Abbess Matilda has been kidnapped! Close off all exits!"

"Imposters are infiltrating the Temple of Healing, just like the one who killed Rubens!" cried one nun, and panic exploded.

"How in Mana's name did they get in?" another shrieked, as doors slammed all around them.

"Never mind that, how did they get out of here?" Ariesa yelled above the din, sword still gripped firmly in hand, adrenaline rushing through her.

"Some twisted magic!" Daena called back, just as poised for battle as she herself was. "That kind of magic won't have much power in the holy area! We'll catch them!"

"And then?" Ariesa wondered.

Daena grew suddenly very grim and quiet as she joined Ariesa. "Then... it will be their last day on earth."

Together, they ran out of the Temple of Healing and down through the city beyond, heading towards the caves beneath. It was the only conceivable spot to which an escape could have been made, but as they burst out onto the trailhead, they found that Escad had beaten them there. He stood uncertainly, sword at the ready but seemingly frozen to the spot.

"Escad!" Daena cried, and he turned with an uncertainty Ariesa had not seen in the cocky bastard before.

"I lost them," he admitted reluctantly. "I saw… a shadowy figure, carrying Matilda… I didn't think it would run so fast!"

"They couldn't have left the area without us being alerted," Daena affirmed. Behind her, breathless nuns caught up, looking around uncertainly.

"I know," Escad replied, "but they might be hiding. I'm going to look some more." With that, he strode off once again.

"Hiding? It seems plausible, but where to start?" mused Ariesa.

"There's a meditation room, deep in the cliffs," Daena replied. "It's supposed to be a place of sanctuary, but… if I wanted to hide, that's where I'd go." The nuns behind her murmured assent, and Daena turned firmly into the darkened interior of the Gato Grottoes.

--

Her hunch had been right, Daena realized with a sinking feeling.

They burst into the meditation room to find the sinister nun leaning over the frail body of Matilda, the old woman seemingly in shock in that half-aware state she often was in nowadays. But their enemy was trapped, and alone, and the forces of Gato's temple were behind her.

Quickly, nuns rushed inside to take their abbess back into custody, but as none were armed that left only Daena and Ariesa were to judge the kidnapper. Daena authoritatively waved them back out of the room, to leave them alone with a mysterious robed figure.

She looked at them with bemused curiosity. "I could have taken them all out easily. Doesn't matter, you know."

"What do you mean? Who are you?" Daena cried. "But you're right, it doesn't matter. Whoever you are, I'll make you regret what you've done!"

The nun cackled, a demonic sound that made Daena shiver. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ariesa getting into position. "This was a trap. If only Escad were here, that's the one Irwin really wanted, but all of you need to be removed. Matilda is weak, we can excise her easily once the rest are gone. You're the ones who will usher in the new era, and you are a threat to Irwin who wants to destroy the world before the Goddess comes to stop him. Especially _that _one," she finished, pointing a withered finger at Ariesa.

"Me?" Ariesa squeaked involuntarily. "What do I have to do with anything?"

"Especially you," the nun hissed, her voice deepening as her body began to elongated, floating into midair. "You don't even know anymore what's in your blood, do you? Nor do you, Neko, or Matilda. You all forgot, and that forgetting shall be your undoing. Shall we start the party?"

Her cackle drifted off into smoke, as did the rest of her. Her body splintered and swirled off towards the ceiling, only to solidify once again in an amorphous form and finally congeal into flesh, a hulking, enormous black thing with the face of a gargoyle and eyes of solid black.

A deep voice roiled from a garish mouth. "Call me a spriggan," the voice, now booming, laughed. "A fairy bodyguard. Part demon. A little gift from Lord Irwin to the fairies, to protect them from humans."

Daena whipped out her flail with a flourish. She had some anger to work out, and she was ready for this. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ariesa pull out her sword, as prepared and capable as she herself was. They circled together around the "nun" that now was not, seeing which of the three would aim a strike first.

It was their enemy that struck, arms extending to whip around. Daena barely dodged the black tentacle that swung her way, but Ariesa neatly rolled underneath it, sword coming up even before she was on her feet. It tore through flesh, not deeply, but as soon as the sword was free, a deft horizontal cut neatly creating an X-shaped wound out of which greenish blood began to flow.

Not to be outdone, Daena whirled around to the back and scored a clean hit, but as she swung her weapon back around, the spriggan twisted with surprising agility, and her blow barely grazed. The weapon was powerful, but control was limited once a strike was initiated, and Daena cursed the speed of the thing that let it slide away so easily.

Fortunately, in the split second of distraction, Ariesa lunged forward to first drive her sword into their foe's body, eliciting a surprisingly high-pitched squeal of pain, She yanked it back out with surprising grace to bring the weapon overhead, cutting deeply into something that passed for a shoulder.

Daena was momentarily fascinated at the neat way Ariesa moved, sword almost a part of her body, before reconciling herself to a supporting role. She swung downward in an awkward bonkle that nevertheless knocked the floating creature off balance.

Ariesa continued her full frontal assault, the spriggan keeping its whipping arms away from her after one sliced off a sizable chunk. It fell to the floor, wriggling, before it shrunk into nothingness and disappeared. Daena swung at every opening she got, driving it towards her friends, until, in a flurry of well-placed blows, whatever energy it used to remain in the air gave out, and it tumbled to the rug below. The putrid droplets fell on the fabric to sizzle as they ate holes to the stone floor beyond. Ariesa raised her sword, bracing for a finishing blow, but before she had a chance, the creature began to shrink, letting out a mournful wail before it, too, disappeared in a pinprick of darkness. Silence filled the room, it leaving only the tears in the carpet to indicate it had ever been there.

--

The two ran back through the caves of Gato, nearly out of breath, but Daena sick with worry over the priestess.

Nearly back to the town proper, Escad ran into them, his worried look reflecting Daena's. "Matilda?" came the one-word question.

"Safe," was Daena's equally short answer, panting. Escad only nodded, following after them as they tore now back up the mountain to the temple. Daena strode with determination back to the room where they had begun, hours before. The sun had set, and sky was fading to purple twilight.

Daena gasped her relief at seeing Matilda safely back in her room, and the tension seemed to lessen even out of Escad.

Escad and Daena gathered around, animosity put aside for the moment, as the rest of the concerned nuns clustered around as well. did the rest of the concerned nuns. A few eagerly asked them to relate the story, which Daena did, wearily, as Ariesa merely stepped back to take it all in.

"Monsters appearing even in the holy land of Gato... how sorrowful! What is happening with the flow of Mana energy!" said one. "It's like it's twisted, it's coming up all wrong..." Hooded heads nodded their agreement.

"Please, everyone, let Matilda rest," Daena asked, and gently but firmly hustled the temple denizens out.

"It's all that damned demon," Escad spat, directing the comment towards Matilda. "He fouls the air even when he is not here. How can you still believe in him after this, and all he's done to you?"

"It is not so simple, Escad. I did not want to give up my freedom to become a priestess, naive as I was. I did not want to give up Irwin, though they told me a priestess could not be friends with a demon. Irwin only offered me a way out, what I wanted."

Escad's temper flared. "Wake up, Matilda! How many times will you defend the demon that stole your powers! Don't you see what he will do with those powers?!"

"Both, stop! This is not helping!" Daena cried, but neither were listening.

"Hmph. You don't take me any more seriously now that you did then. If only you had taken me a little more seriously… But perhaps, I can show you the truth before it's too late." With a murderous gleam in his eyes, Escad stalked off yet again.

"Seems to be his preferred mode of exit," Ariesa observed, to no one in particular. Daena made as if to follow, but Ariesa stopped her with one hand on her arm. "Not now, Daena. See to Matilda."

"You're right," Daena replied disconsolately, before kneeling next to the stone bed of the dreamweaving room. "How are you feeling, Matilda?"

"Daena... like my little sister, all these years," Matilda murmured distantly. "Irwin... Escad... so much lost, so much misunderstood... and now, only the heavenly silence comforts me in my pain... soon I will join it, and I will be free of that pain…" Hey eyelids fluttered open briefly before sinking back into a meditative state.

"Don't say such a thing! Matilda, stay with us!" Daena cried, half-panicked.

Matilda smiled, eyes half-closed still. "Do not worry, Daena. I am not ready to leave yet. Please, just leave me with my thoughts for the moment." And she was removed from them once again.

--

Once Daena and the girl had left, Matilda was finally able to relax. The girl. Something about Ariesa troubled her as much as it awed her, and she could not explain it.

The two torches flickered, casting their light across the room. They drew her eye, hypnotically, as her gaze flickered from one to the other. The two side by side, in perfect unison, as they had been since Gato had begun, with no source of fuel other than their own inner strength.

It made her wish it could be so simple for her. She had thought, once, that such might be the case. But now… she wondered if she had made the right choices with Escad, with Irwin. She had thought Irwin was the one who truly saw her for herself, and perhaps he did, in a way the Goddess did not allow her to understand yet. She had made choices with so much faith and hope… but the harmony she craved was not in it, not with either.

Matilda exhaled, a long, deep breath released, and her pain seemed to release with it, in the exercise she had repeated a thousand times before. Every time, the last ten years, when the pain seized her once again, she had let it go this same way, and sunk into that strange dimension of dreams.

She had friends in those dreams.

A tall bird wearing a straw hat pulled low ambled up to her. "Hello, Pokiehl," she greeted the avian Wisdom. "Good to see you again."

"Matilda," he replied. "Where have you brought us today?"

Matilda looked around, and her heart skipped a beat as she realized to where she had dreamed herself. The Ulkan Mines. Where it all began, or ended, depending on the way one saw it.

"How do I find myself here yet again?" she demanded.

Pokiehl shrugged. "We are deep within the earth here. The earth teaches us of the cosmos and all its ancient memories. And here are your own ancient memories. Perhaps the earth, or the goddess herself wishes you to return here. Have you looked at yourself?"

There was no mirror, but Matilda lifted a hand to see the silky, unbroken skin of youth. She reached for her hair, and pulled forward a thick, auburn braid. She did not need to see herself to realize the doll's face of a naive sixteen-year-old girl would be looking back at her.

She reached to her lapel, knowing already what would be there, the jeweled brooch she had not worn in ten years. "Why has the Goddess brought me back to this?" Matilda wondered.

"The goddess does for us what she thinks is best for us, and it is up to us to follow Her wishes," Pokiehl replied, strumming one long note on the lute he carried. "If you are even here, you must have some faith in Her."

"But why here…" Matilda was not sure of her objection.

"Why not?" Pokiehl lifted his head slightly, but still not enough for eyes to be visible beneath that odd hat. "Mana is everywhere. I could tell you what I think, but I won't tell you anything that the world can't tell you for itself. You follow the pathways of ascetism to find Mana, and the Goddess, but you forget, she is all around. " He paused. "Have you heard of the Spell of Truth?"

"The spell that Anuella's soldiers used to destroy the monstrous Wyrm summoned against them," she replied, the old story still fresh in her mind.

"Yes, but do you know what it _is_?" Pokiehl replied, before answering his own question. "The powers of truth come from knowing the truth of Mana and the Goddess, the truth of life."

A movement caught her attention, and she turned, startled, to see a sproutling ambling into the cavern. For inexplicable reasons, she felt as if she had seen this one before, though they were all indistinguishable as far as she could tell.

"To live… is to live…" it muttered, eyes barely seeming to notice much outside itself, or the others sharing the cavern with her. Thinking of what Pokiehl had just told her, about understanding Mana, understanding life… she knelt down and reached a hand towards it, trying to reach out to whatever it was connected to, but just as she felt she was reaching something… it slipped out of her grasp. There was something there, something just at the edge of understanding, about Mana, about the Goddess… but it was gone.

She straightened again, watching it wander in endless circles, now uttering pure nonsense. "Mana is everywhere, in the grass, in the air… I love air!" it squealed. Pure irritation replaced her previous thoughts.

"Who's there?" a voice suddenly cried.

"Matilda, to me!" Pokiehl whispered urgently, and suddenly - she didn't know how - her appearance changed again, to nothingness, invisibility. The sproutling ran towards another exit, and promptly disappeared.

Tearing around the corner came another younger figure, of a brash knight of Gato. Escad Liotte, heir to a long line of holy knights. Matilda's heart skipped a beat. If only he had ever truly understood _her_, things might have been different, but...

Escad screeched to a halt to regard Pokiehl. "A Wisdom. Well, I guess, you're not with the demon."

"The demon?" Pokiehl inquired politely.

"Don't play dumb with me. Olbohn told me, you all wish him dead. Everything about him is demonic! Not a drop of humanity! He'll bring catastrophe to the world! I've got to do something about it before it's too late!"

"Oh?" Pokiehl replied, cocking an eyebrow. "The end of the world? Do you really think it will go down so easily? Do you think that those who want to destroy the world have no place in shaping its outcome?"

"Messenger of the Cosmic Truth, they call you, Pokiehl. Sounds like a bunch of nonsense to me. He will, you'll see, and Matilda was too weakened by her emotions to stop him as she should. In the temple, she was protected, she had power. Matilda, you're such a fool!" And he raced off as a hundred times before.

_A fool_. Matilda's heart sank. She knew he was right, but she knew she would do it all over.

Pokiehl turned to her as her body returned to clarity, such as it was in this dimension. "You must remember..."

--

Irwin led her by the hand as they ran through the mines together, praying the Gato forces would not catch her, praying the mine entrance would hold up. But if she was no longer a priestess, would the Goddess still let her pray to her?

Matilda was a slight woman, and she had never been strong. Meditative temple life did not make for physical rigor, and she stumbled as she was tugged along, though Irwin was always there to pull her to her feet again. This deep, the gas from within the earth made her cough, and Irwin looked at her with concern.

It was in one of the deepest caverns, a large, dark moist area, that she finally was able to breathe again. "Let's rest a little before we go further. You should feel better here."

Matilda could only nod gratefully, looking on her wild beloved. He merely regarded her without expression, but she knew he was concerned, and she practically melted with love all over again.

Silence stretched in the empty mines. Finally, Matilda felt compelled to break it. "I wonder why Escad hates you so much?"

Irwin snorted. "I'm a demon. I doubt he needs another reason."

The cold dampness of the ground was creeping through her robe and dress, and it made her shiver involuntarily. From fear or simple cold, she could not say, but suddenly she wanted very much to go home. "I don't feel safe here," she admitted.

Irwin moved to wrap a clawed hand around her. It was a rare, intimate gesture, that she prized when his human side came out. "There, there," he soothed. "Your ancestors and the spirits protect you."

"But do they really still protect me, after I ran away!" Matilda could hear the edge of panic in her own voice. "There's no place left for me! I want to go to the Underworld with you!"

"We will all go there, eventually," he told her. "But I don't think you will go there yet. The spirits want you to live. Call them here, and let them soothe you."

Matilda reached out with her mind. There were fairies everywhere... and even here, she could feel them, in another corridor, and she drew them to her, just as she had learned to do when she was a child. There were few they truly trusted, but they had come to her, and let her know that they believed in her.

One finally arrived, and Matilda drew off its power, that link to Mana that was so tenuous but somehow more deep than anything else. They had promised her, that they would keep her safe, protect her, give her power. It was all the power she had, and she told no one the reason.

"What do you seek, little one?" it asked her, tiny eyes meeting hers.

"I seek the light," she answered simply.

"There is light within the darkness," intoned the fairy. "Balance is the way of Mana." The small being turned to regard Irwin.

Irwin examined the glowing being with great interest. "So this is what they look like."

That made Matilda suddenly, profoundly uncomfortable. If Irwin could see the fairies... it meant they found him a threat.

The being flitted in front of Irwin's face. "What have you to do with this, demon?"

"I'm taking her away from here," Irwin grunted.

"So." The fairy seemed to be thinking. "If she is not to be Priestess, then she is to be our queen. You must bring her to us at the Tower of Winds, and we can bring her to our world there."

"Your queen?" Irwin inquired.

The fairy looked cross. "We want someone with strong powers. She has them." Matilda was silent during the exchange.

"I know," Irwin grinned a toothy demonic grin. "From the fairies themselves. She told me." He reached out with both hands.

Matilda squealed as his hands clapped around the fairy, before realizing it probably couldn't be squished. But perhaps what he did next was worse. He pulled his hands away to reveal the fairy encased in - it seemed to be glass, but she knew it wasn't true glass. It was magic, and it was a prison.

"Irwin!" she cried, but she could already hear the fairy, her voice muted but clear nonetheless, not just the one voice but a fairy chorus.

_You betrayed us_. Matilda tried to protest that it was Irwin. But the fairies did not care. _You brought us to him. The responsibility rests on you_. And with a wink, she felt the powers she had relied on for so long disappear, she stumbling from the shock.

Irwin did not move to help her up, absorbed in his new prize. "What are you doing?" Matilda demanded, the first time she had ever raised her voice to him.

Irwin turned to glare at her with true demonism in his eyes. "You hate this world Matilda. I want to destroy it. Seems our goals coincide, don't they?" He tapped on the glass thoughtfully. "Some fairy power is all I need. If they can help someone like _you_, imagine what someone like me can do with them."

"They'll never follow you," Matilda hissed. "They are creatures of the Goddess."

"And how many even believe in her as more than metaphor anymore?" Irwin countered. "Face it, they are as lost from the Goddess as the rest of us. I'm sure they will be happy enough to help once I make them realize our causes are the same, just as when they joined Anuella."

"Anuella wanted peace," Matilda half-mumbled. Her head felt woolly, her thoughts muddled.

"Anuella caused plenty of destruction," Irwin replied. "I must have the fairies' powers - and the trail of this one will lead me straight to their land. Don't worry, Matilda, I will send for you soon enough."

Matilda shrieked as Irwin fled, and in response to her scream, a familiar man ran in. Escad.

"Matilda!" he cried. "What did the demon do?" Anger was in his eyes, but he reached one hand out to her, and when she took it, it closed around her own with surprising gentleness.

Matilda lifted herself from the ground, her dress soiled. "It does not matter, Escad. Take me back to Gato, and tell them I am ready to become the Priestess."

To herself she thought, _Why did I ever think there would be something better?_

--

Escad trudged down the Luon Highway as night fell, filled with rage against Irwin and desperate to hunt him down, but not knowing exactly where he was going. Still, the feeling of heading somewhere was what he craved.

"Much cooler out here than the Underworld, isn't it?" a voice startled him.

He pulled up short at that, and turned to see a white-furred wolf-woman perched on a rocky outcrop leaning over the path. A purple mane spilled out from under her headpiece, and behind her, her tail swished warily.

"What makes you say that?" he asked warily. "Who are you?"

The woman pulled herself forward to sit on the ledge, armored legs dangling downward. "I am Sierra," she told him, voice clipped and efficient, but dignified nonetheless. "And I keep one eye on the Underworld, so I know you have just returned from there."

Escad didn't know what to say to that, and a long silence drew out before Sierra spoke again.

"I was wondering…" She paused as if afraid to say the next. "I was checking up on someone you may know."

"I haven't seen much of anyone in ten years," he replied, a bit snarkily.

"Perhaps…" Sierra gave him a very direct look. "I am thinking of someone in the Underworld. A man named Larc."

"Larc?!" Escad exclaimed. He recalled a wolf-man with bristling gray fur, and a toothy grin that made him seem far more dangerous than he was. Of course he knew Larc, the dragoon to the ancient dragon Drakonis, both trapped in the Underworld - for the time being. He knew Larc all too well, in fact.

"Is he well?" Sierra demanded.

Escad took a deep breath, wondering how much Sierra really knew. "He is," he finally replied. "As much as can be expected, for someone stuck in the Underworld." Sierra seemed mollified at that. "What's it to you?" he asked, equally demanding.

"He is my brother," Sierra replied. Escad started. _They look nothing alike_, he thought to himself, as Sierra bounded off.

* * *

**Trivia: **The boss the heroine and Daena fight in-game is called a Spriggan, and looks like a genie or something. I thought that was something the game designers made up, but Wikipedia provides this:

"Spriggans were grotesquely ugly, found at old ruins and barrows guarding buried treasure and generally acting as fairy bodyguards. They were also said to be busy thieves. Though usually small, they had the ability to swell to enormous size (they're sometimes speculated to be the ghosts of the old giants)... Certainly their disposition was poor, and they caused mischief to those who offended them. They sent storms to blight crops, and sometimes stole away mortal children, leaving their ugly changelings in their place."

Hmm...


	15. Secrets: War

**15. Secrets: War**

The hills south of Rolante were a far cry from the northern icefields of Altena. Even this late in the year, they were warm and balmy, if a touch windy. Anuella found she didn't entirely mind.

Alara, the Amazon Queen, her distant cousin, escorted them through the hilly trails. Here in Rolante, at the eastern edges of the world, the Amazons survived and maintained their belief in the Goddess. It made Anuella feel a little less tainted.

"Why here?" asked Selva. "If it was the earth element you wanted, we should have gone to Forcena."

"Because Forcena is on its way to Empire, and Rolante is still pure," Anuella replied. "Where the elementals make their homes is no longer so simple and discrete. They are as lost as the rest of us."

Alara nodded with that fierce determination one still saw on the Amazons, though their numbers had dwindled in the wars. A consequence of sending women instead of men to war, perhaps. "We, at least, await the return of the Goddess," she responded. The amazons cheered their approval.

Anuella had already begun to drown them out. She was here for a reason, and the twitters of her fellow humans fell on increasingly deaf ears.

For days, she had been searching to find just the _right _hill for what she sought. She still wasn't sure if it would _work_, but she had reached out, felt, with whatever skills of Mana she possessed, and something about this hill seemed so dignified, so ancient, that it drew her like mage to eye of flame.

It was wisdom she sought, and where else could she be sure to find it but in the earth? _A power more wise than humans, ancient memories of the earth itself. There must be that someplace_.

She placed first one hand against the rocky slope, then the other, and felt the reverberation from deep within the earth, the feeling of life above, life around, and life within. _Was this something like what the Jumi felt, _she wondered? She succumbed to the seduction, leaning her whole body against the cold rocks, and for a moment she felt as if she herself was part of eternity. She poured all she had into that feeling.

And it answered back.

A low rumbling erupted, and somewhere, distant from her, she saw the petty humans around her gaze around in nervousness, and a short redheaded man paced agitatedly. _Selva_, said a distant part of her mind, but she ignored it, lost in her sensations.

The rumble became a roar, and she was vaguely conscious of rocks falling around her, the surface reshaping above her. But she did not look up yet, she clung to the rocks to give them every bit of life she could find within herself. Only when she felt the rocks settle, did she gently pull away, and look up to a hill now shaped in a gargantuan, if crude, face.

The hill opened its eyes to a gaping Selva, a determined Alara, and an ethereal Anuella standing between. "Hello, my children," the mountain intoned, in a booming voices that shook down the valleys.

Anuella knelt reverently. She may have been the one to bring it to consciousness, but the earth itself had been here, filled with life, for millions of years. "I seek your wisdom," she requested.

"Wisdom..." The mountain trailed off, showing a rocky expression of concertation. "Well, first, I should have a name."

"How about Gaues?" Alara suggested. "From Gaia, an ancient earth-name for the goddess?"

"I've never heard the name," said Anuella contemplatively.

"Before the ocean, before the tree, there was only rock, and that was all the Goddess could be," Selva recited. Anuella gave him a _look,_ scolding him to seriousness, and he returned a wide-toothed grin. "What? It's Pokiehl, you know that poet who's so popular nowadays? Apparently Goddess-poetry is in style."

"Gaues," the hill mused. "I like it. And you are?"

Anuella drew herself up to her full height, silken cape billowing in the wind. Somehow, that made her feel more confident for what she said next. "I am Anuella, First of the Wisdoms. I have brought you to life, Gaues, to give your wisdom to this world, until the Goddess returns."

"The Goddess," Gaues mused. "If only we had her, but I guess we are stumbling about until then. Let's hope she can bring us Her own wisdom when she returns."

"There is more," Anuella sighed, and she relayed the story of the cursed doll she had created, pursued by the mages, and the results she feared. "So they come, yet again," she concluded.

Gaues looked thoughtful. "The mages still pursue whatever they can, after all this time?" he wondered.

Anuella felt sad. "Yes, though I wish it were otherwise. My mother's arms are long, it seems."

"Do not scold yourself, child. No one person could cause all this. I feel the disturbances. Mana is slight, but I can tell, hundreds of miles away, what the energy of the world is," Gaues told her. "My wisdom to you is this: Prepare for war."

--

Anuella tossed and turned in the tent she shared with Selva. He had gone out, as he often did, as fickle as the wind itself, that man, but every time he left, she missed him. She wavered in and out of fitful sleep.

Too many dreams bothered her. It was a consequence, she thought, of extending her life; she had too many memories to pore over. And it had not gotten better since she had begun to prepare for the upcoming, inevitable conflicts.

It was Magnolia who haunted her tonight. The doll with the eyes of Flame. It was too late, she had destroyed the family in the little cottage, the house and its inhabitants burnt to cinders; Anuella had gone herself to see the wreckage, pain shooting through her heart as she gazed upon the ashes. Selva's birds reported the doll had taken on the name of the little girl she had been given to. Armed with the evil power Anuella had bestowed upon her, she had fled the mages, to be lost Goddess-knows-where, another flicker of uncontrolled power.

_Power_. That was what it came down to, didn't it? And she did not have enough. Everyone around her, her students, Selva, knew it.

She stirred from the nightmare at Selva's touch. "Come with me."

"Where? Why?" she sleepily mumbled. "Is it far?"

"Someone needs to meet you, and far enough," Selva replied. "You should dress."

It was perhaps two hours later when Anuella, bracing herself against the freezing cold, wondered why she had been dragged out of bed to climb the cold mountain trail, high above her camp.

But she trusted Selva, and she struggled on, brooding silently the while.

Finally, they arrived at a precipice which tapered to a point so slender, Anuella might have been scared to venture out, had she not been drawn by a thin pinprick of light. She scurried over, silencing the part of her that warned against running over icy cliffs in the dark.

She knelt before it, hands hovering over it but scared to touch. It hummed with Mana she had not seen before, not in the Eyes of Flame, not in her own creations, not even in the cores of the Jumi. "What is it?" she breathed to the air around her.

The air responded. Breezes rose to swirl around her, gentle as a voice whispering in her ear, before a real voice responded. "It's a Mana Stone."

The winds rose further, whipping over her, but Anuella ignored them and shielded her eyes to look forward as – could it be? - a _dragon_ rose before her. His wings flapped the air that chilled her, but she no longer cared, as her eyes met the enormous, heavenly creature. It was covered in blue-gray skin, scales, but somehow looking soft as fur, and its webbed wings beat gently, a contrast to a face ringed by spines.

She inhaled sharply. "How can that be? The Mana Stones are gone, shattered."

"Altenan, you think too much of magic past, and not enough of magic future. That is why your country is falling apart," the dragon scolded. _Akravator_, the name suddenly surfaced in her mind, the dragon rumored to live at the top of the Nor'n Peaks, as they were called locally. Only, this was no rumor, this was him, in the flesh, speaking to her. "This is the new Mana Stone, as nascent as the Goddess who will control it. The Stone of Wind. And I guard it."

"A dragon?" she questioned.

"Who else?" answered Akravator. "We are creatures of the Goddess as much as the fairies were, but there were fewer of us, and so individually we are stronger. The fairies of the new Goddess are splintered shades, not divine entities, seeking someone to cling to. They cannot be trusted any more than humans."

Anuella pondered that, and found she more or less agreed. A thought occurred to her. "Selva," she began, "you've been involved in this for a while, haven't you?"

Selva gave a mock bow. "Named Selva of the Four Winds as the dragoon of Akravator," he replied. "At least, until I get to be a Wisdom too."

"Prove yourself," Anuella retorted reflexively, the joke familiar. She returned her attention to Akravartor. "Why do you show me this?"

"So you can see what we try to preserve," the dragon rumbled. "You will not be able to keep back the mages, and eventually they will find this as well. Pure Mana, though weak, less than a Jumi core at the moment. The faeries hope with just as much uncertainty that they will survive to the awakening of the Goddess to become real. But if you joined forces... You know of Wyrms?" he said, abruptly switching subject.

"Little," Anuella admitted. "Shadows of the dragons, as Shadoles are the shadows of humans. Summoned creatures, from even beyond even the Underworld as the dragons are from beyond the humans, with power beyond imagining, it is said…"

"Good. You know more than most, and you are right to be afraid." Akravator shuddered briefly. "I fear… the power of the mages… we may have to summon a Wyrm to defeat them, and nothing good could come of that. Even more frightening, they might try to summon one _themselves_."

"I understand," Anuella replied. "How do I convince them?"

"They scatter," replied Akravator. "Some go to the lake, some to the jungle, and some remain on the snowfields below, wherever they sense some iota of Mana. Rarely do they allow themselves to be seen. But you, you already see them, whether they like it or not, in a time when few can do so; and more, they seem to have found some trust in you. If anyone can bring the humans and fairies together, it is you. Go with my blessings, Daughter of Light."

"Daughter of _Ice_," Anuella corrected. "I am Altenan, that's the expression."

"No," the dragon chided. "You forget how much blood is in you other than your mother's. I can only hope that what you wring will bring the light back to the world."

--

Anuella had never wanted to be involved in war, but nevertheless, here she found herself, this place, this day, with followers human and fairy, all carrying her creations – dolls, artifacts, instruments to call on the elemental spirits. The spirits were regaining power, but slowly, she could feel it; fifty years ago, these instruments would have produced almost nothing when used. But now, with the fairies nearby to magnify the instruments' power, it gave her a chance, a chance to duel pure Mana against the weakened and corrupted skills of the mages.

Halciet faced off against her, the bold, bulky Forcenan who had learned magic from the intermarried Altenans, before magic had become scorned in warlike Forcena. "Lady Anuella," he said, not sneering, merely matter-of-fact. "You stand against the mages. Your mother would not be proud."

"Don't mock me with my title. I have never been proud of my mother," she told him. "Were you proud of her when she tried to destroy the new tree?"

"She was only trying to get Mana back in the world."

"So she could have it for herself," Anuella scoffed. "The mages do not own the world anymore."

"Then what are you doing with your dolls, Anuella?" Halciet retorted.

She looked at the ground, suddenly ashamed that her doubts had been voiced. "Remembering," she said softly. "So one day we may have those memories when the Goddess returns Mana to us."

"Mana is with us now." Halciet. "It's in the seventh moon." He motioned to a tall, silvery-blond woman dressed only in shades of gray, wielding a vicious-looking hammer.

Anuella caught her breath. "Mana. The core," she said, startled.

"You can sense that?" the woman said, equally surprised. "My compliments, Wisdom Anuella. Your powers are indeed as potent as I had heard. I am Lady Blackpearl."

Lady Blackpearl knew more than she let on, if she referred to Anuella as Wisdom. She knew of Jumi, of course; but she did not know everything about them, nor did she know who this woman was. For a long moment, the two women locked eyes, and Anuella was surprised to see some of her own sadness in the other's eyes. The sadness of those who hoped that something good would come out of it all.

Blackpearl broke the look first. "You see what the Jumi are, Wisdom," she addressed Anuella. "Why do you not become one of us?"

Anuella's heart leapt for a moment at the idea. _To live forever, tied to Mana itself_. But she had ruined that chance already. "I cannot."

Blackpearl looked at her closely, a recognition dawning that made Anuella positively squirm, as if she were naked. No, she corrected herself; far worse than that, it was her soul that was exposed. "I see," Blackpearl said cautiously, and Anuella suddenly felt more soiled than ever by that one but of Underworld magic she had used. Hurriedly she changed the subject.

"What, then, is the seventh moon?" Anuella inquired. "The six moons are water, fire, earth, wind, moon, and tree."

"The seventh is both dark and light," Blackpearl replied. She pulled the collar of her dress slightly ajar, and Anuella saw, for the first time, a real core. The white pearlescent surface clouded with swirls of dark that congealed and diffused once again.

"Light is always preferable to dark," Anuella announced, surprised at the calm that had settled back on her.

"So you say, only because Mana is scarce. Once, it was understood that dark and light must balance. A hundred years before your time," Blackpearl replied, voice calm but gripping her weapon with visible tension. "Light, its glow, is to amplify Mana, and chaos, darkness, is to allow the opposite elements to coexist. Balance is the key, and unless that balance can be found, my people will never be safe. Just as we balance each other, here and now. So, unless you would like to give in, Anuella, and bring the power of the fairies to our side..."

Anuella hung her head, wondering if there was any wisdom in the words she was about to say. "Then let the war begin."


	16. Legends: Fairies

**16. Legends: Fairies**

Ariesa was awakened in her rooms at the Gato temple by an urgent summons from one of the nuns. "Madam, Matilda wishes to see you immediately."

She groaned, and pulled herself from sleep only with a tremendous force of will. Forcing her legs to leave the bed and walk over to the washbasin, she hurriedly splashed a little water on her face to make herself presentable to the abbess, before nodding to the nun, and following her out to the now-familiar Dreamweaving Room.

Matilda was much as she had seen her the night before, reclining on the stone bier, and Ariesa idly wondered if the priestess ever slept. "Good morning, Abbess. I trust you slept well?" Ariesa greeted her politely.

Matilda closed tired eyes. "I never sleep well. I make up for it by being at peace during the day. But thank you for asking."

"I'm surprised Daena is not here already," Ariesa noted.

Matilda looked troubled. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Daena left during the night, leaving only a note saying she needed to speak with Irwin."

"Irwin? How?" Ariesa puzzled.

"All we know, from what you, Daena, and Escad have told me, is that he has been in the land of the faeries." Matilda told her. "But as much as I care for Irwin, I fear for Daena's safety as well. She is young and headstrong. She does not know her weaknesses, and I had hoped you might be the calm head that prevailed."

Ariesa hardly thought of herself as the voice of reason, but she could not bring herself to undermine the abbess's faith in her. "What would you have me do?"

"Find her, please," Matilda replied. "Things are changing, and I do not know what she might encounter. I do not want her to be alone. The spirits' blessings will be with you."

"I will, Abbess. But where should I look first?"

"I... " Matilda paused. "I am no longer as sure of myself as when I was young, and thought I knew it all. So much of the ancient legends is just mythos created by those who do not truly know what happened," Matilda mused. "The world is an endless cycle of hoping for balance, and the fairies are as much a part of it as any of us..." It was a sentiment she had expressed before, but apparently she felt it bore repeating.

The abbess paused on that thought for a moment, but she soon spoke again. "Irwin… I can't imagine he would still be with the faeries of the jungle, after what you told me happened there. He was always the sort to operate in secrecy until he could be sure of himself. I suppose you will have to find an avenue to the land of the fairies elsewhere."

Ariesa let the words of the priestess sink in. Frankly, she had not the slightest idea where to begin, but there was no question of refusing. She mulled on Matilda's thoughts, a crooked, misunderstood world, hoping for some sort of balance… and she hoped beyond hope that there was some small thing she could do to right the balance.

The torches flickered as if in response, the light fueled by the fairies continuing to shine despite it all.

--

The sun had not yet hit its peak when Ariesa found herself on the road again, no ideas, no clues, and nothing but a promise to keep her company. She shielded her eyes from the sun and tried to think.

_Fairies_, she thought to herself. Fairies are the key.

She ruminated on the subject over and over again, trying to put together what was going on. Somehow, her feet had decided to lead her back to her house. Perhaps they knew better than she herself did, for she was short on a few supplies. In any case, before the sun had moved much past the horizon, she had found herself approaching her own door, still contemplating.

"Ariesa" shrieked the voices of the twins as she stepped through the door, pulling her back to the outside world. Not that she had been gone so terribly long, and she had sent a note returning from the forest, less than a week ago; but that was hardly the point for the energetic duo. They practically bowled her over in their enthusiasm to have her back again.

That, was not so surprising. What was, was the voice she heard in the background as she was greeting her youngsters. "Hello, stranger."

There was no flirtation in the comment, yet the barest flicker of an eyebrow above those piercing eyes was somehow more suggestive than anything she had seen in a while. "How are you doing, Elazul?" she greeted him cordially, letting her heartbeat return to normal. "And what are you doing in my house?"

"Having tea, obviously." He gestured to the cup.

"And do you always have tea at my house when I'm not here?"

"Is that a problem?" The brief, goofy half-grin he flashed was one of the happiest expressions she had seen on the Jumi.

She didn't want to spoil it, but gave him a slightly disapproving look nevertheless. "I suppose not." She sat and pushed a cup towards him, which he obligingly filled from the pot. She sipped pensively, he lifting cup as well, wondering who would speak first.

He did.

"The reason I came," he said finally, "was to ask you if you would have Pearl over for a bit. Someone saw you coming into town, so… I thought I'd beat you too it and get here first."

That was surprising. One, that he would leave Pearl; two, that he trusted her enough to take care of his guardian. "I thought you didn't wanted to leave Pearl behind," she said with a hint of question.

Elazul sighed. "I didn't. But there's somewhere I need to go, and the core of being a knight is that a guardian's life comes before his own, so…"

"You're going somewhere dangerous," she finished for him.

He nodded. "Geo."

"Geo?" she asked, puzzled. "A magic academy is dangerous?"

He sighed as if not wanting to tell her the next part. "That's not all Geo is, or has been. It's a place Jumi cores are traded." Ariesa gasped in shock.

"That's still done?" she asked. "I thought you told me that only happened in the old hunting, centuries ago."

"I don't know. It used to happen in Geo, among other places. Unfortunately, I have to assume the worst." Elazul looked grim. "So can Pearl stay here?"

Ariesa was torn. She had a promise to keep. She noted Elazul hadn't told her what he needed to do, either. "I would... but I need to go somewhere..."

"You're leaving again?" Bud pouted. "Take me with you! I've got some wicked spells to practice! You promised to teach us!"

She turned to him, a bit guilty. She _had_ been neglecting their education, but it seemed something else was always in the way. But now was not the time to fix that. "That's the way it goes, buddy. Maybe next time. I'm not sure where I'm going anyway."

Lisa gave her a look. "You don't even _know_?"

Ariesa had wanted to remain discreet, but slowly the two pulled the whole story out of her. "And so now I'm looking for fairies, and I don't even know where they might be. There's the jungle, but that's dangerous fairy territory that I have to avoid, and Matilda said it was futile anyway as Irwin wouldn't be there."

"Lake Kilma!" shouted Lisa and Bud as one.

"You think?" Ariesa asked. "How would you know?"

The twins shared that knowing brother-and-sister look that always drove her up the wall. Lisa finally answered. "Fairies 101. It's a required class at the academy."

"They got you there," noted Elazul, who had lately remained quietly polite in the conversation.

"They prefer the south shore, by Wendel," Bud added helpfully.

"Lake Kilma..." she mused. "Right around the corner. I can't see why not. But you see, Elazul, why I can't stay with Pearl."

"I'll go with you," he told her.

"Huh?" It took her aback; he had always been single-mindedly committed to his own mission, own responsibilities.

He raised a finger. "I will go with you, and then you will go with me. I feel like you shouldn't go alone. It's not safe."

_Safe_? She was a warrior. "And Geo is?"

"No," he responded quietly, and suddenly the unspoken meaning was there over both their heads. "But I will go with you, because I am a knight."

_Knight_. "And what about your guardian?"

"She'll stay with us!" Bud shouted, jumping from the table in excitement.

"We like having Pearl over," Lisa said, more sedately. "That is, if he's okay with it..." She looked at Elazul.

Elazul pondered a moment. "Well, anywhere in the Domina area, I think is safe for her."

"And the twins aren't half bad at spells," Ariesa told him comfortingly. Lisa smiled, and Bud practically beamed at the praise.

Elazul returned to Domina to pick up his quiet guardian, and Ariesa found herself unwittingly fussing, trying to get everyone settled just so. Pearl, she awarded her own bed, overriding the young Jumi woman's objections as she herself curled up calmly on the floor. Elazul found himself an odd spot downstairs, and Ariesa drifted off to sleep, mind still racing on the next leg of the plan, catching only fragments of sleep before the next morning found Pearl firmly ensconced at her house, and she and Elazul heading back out on the road.

--

She hadn't really seen Elazul since he left so abruptly in Gato, and being suddenly thrown into his exclusive company was a bit awkward, to say the least. Especially since Elazul was a man of few words. She found herself feeling as if she was prattling on, but it was essential for him to know the background to whatever he was getting into. Once she finished telling the story of Matilda, Irwin, Escad, and Daena, however, silence returned quickly. Fortunately, they had the scenery to keep them distracted, and his help was welcome in getting rid of pesky creatures that blocked their path around the lake's perimeter.

It was as if the faeries were _conspiring_ to keep them away. Though the twins were right, there _were _fairies to be found here at the lake. A lot of them. Strange flickers in the bushes caught her eye every few steps, it seemed, though rarely did she catch more than a momentary glimpse.

"Wait, there's - Damn!" she shouted, as yet another one flashed out of her sight.

"I think they're doing it on purpose," Elazul noted. He wasn't doing much better, Jumi or not.

"Great. How am I supposed to find them?"

"Well, Daena well probably have the same problem, if she's here. Perhaps if we climbed to the top of that cliff we might get a better look?"

Ariesa only shrugged in acquiescence, leaving Elazul to lead the way forward. They climbed the cliff to see a breathtaking view of the clear lake surface below them, but still no fairies; however, they were not alone.

"Is that a... turtle, at the top of the cliff?" Elazul said, a bit too noisily.

"Not so loud!" Ariesa, hissed back, embarrassed. But the turtle had already heard.

Turning towards them, the turtle bowed his head in greeting. "I am the wisdom Tote, but you may call me Turtle. It is what I am, after all."

"A pleasure to meet you, Wisdom," Ariesa replied, with a bit of a glare at Elazul, who grunted something that might have been mistaken for a greeting.

"What can I do for you, my children?"

There was nothing to do but to get to the point. "We are trying to get to the land of the faeries, but we can't get one to sit still long enough."

Tote chuckled. "Well, to answer that, first you must understand how we differ from the fairies."

"Our appearances?" guessed Elazul.

"No, it's our worlds. I think," responded Ariesa.

"You are both right, and wrong. We are all the same; our appearances are only the shadows reflecting on the lake's surface." The turtle leaned slightly over the edge of the cliff, peering towards the surface below, as if to demonstrate. "Their world was once separate, but now, the boundaries blur, they are unbalanced. The fairies are part of Mana as well, and we all face the same dangers, the same problems. The Goddess looks after us all."

"That still doesn't answer our question," Elazul replied grumpily.

Tote shrugged. "I merely warn you of this so you know what you might be getting yourselves into. You can only see the fairies if you acknowledge the truth of things, if you allow yourself to be a part of Mana. Well, another young lady was here a little while ago to ask the same thing. I suggested she jump in a circle of fairies. I hear it's a way to get to their land."

"That must be Daena," Ariesa replied excitedly. "Which way did she go?"

--

Elazul was doubtful, but Ariesa was suddenly filled with hope once again. She was validated a short while later when, returning down the cliff along the lakeshore, she spied a familiar feline face.

"Daena!" she cried, dashing down the hill before Elazul could stop her.

Her friend turned, with a worried look Ariesa had not seen on her face only days before. The sprite skidded to a halt at Daena's suddenly careworn face.

'What is it?" she inquired worriedly.

Daena looked out at the lake with a faraway expression for a long moment before replying. "It's all true, Ariesa. Irwin has been in the land of the faeries, and he is their king, or sorts. But for the life of me, I can't figure out why he did that, or what he wants now. Demons? Fairies? What's the connection? Does he want Matilda's power, or revenge on Escad?"

"Or maybe something else altogether," said Elazul, sneaking up behind them,

Daena paused. "I remember you, the Jumi who tried to help Rubens. I suppose I can trust you. What are you thinking?"

"What does everyone want?" Elazul responded. "Power. Obviously Irwin wants Matilda's power, and maybe the fairies want it too. But I thought her power was from the faeries, and if she is drained already, why would Irwin want her so badly? Is there more to her?"

"And what concern is it of yours, Jumi?" she asked challengingly.

"Nothing," he replied in the indifferent manner Ariesa recognized well. "Nothing at all."

Daena looked suddenly world-weary, and Ariesa realized Elazul had hit too many sore spots. "You should go," Daena told the duo. "This does not concern you."

"No," Ariesa replied determinedly.

"No?" Daena asked. "Please, you're my friend, don't do this too me..."

For the first time, Elazul stepped forward to defend her. "She said no," he said, a bit abruptly, but somehow it touched Ariesa in a way she couldn't describe.

Daena looked at him. "Is that so? Very will, I will hardly argue with a Jumi Knight. Come, then," and she ran off into the forest, leaving Ariesa and Elazul with nothing left to do but to hurry up.

--

He was facing away when she first saw him, but memory surfaced so fast Daena didn't need to ask who she had found.

"Irwin," she called across the clearing.

He turned, somehow the same as the guy she had remembered them all growing up with, but still, more different than she could begin to describe.

"It's been a long time, hasn't it, Daena?" said a deep, growling voice from within a mane of fire-red hair.

Daena swallowed sudden fearfulness with effort, forcing congeniality. "It has, Irwin. And look at you, all scary and demonic. What are you up to with the fairies, big guy?"

He cackled evilly. _Was this the man Matilda still pined for? _"Well, what do you think I might do?"

"Just answer the question." Daena was suddenly irritated, and snappish, thinking of Matilda wasting away by the day back in Gato. "Isn't it enough what you've done to Matilda? Aging past her time, you taking away my friend, and I can't do a thing about it. Escad blames you, you know."

"Escad," Irwin mused. "I'm sure he does. I hope he's suffered plenty, for trying to keep Matilda from me. I'll get my revenge against him soon enough."

"You have such hatred for him? What have _you_ done for Matilda that is any better?"

"Silence, girl," Irwin said, suddenly deathly quiet. "You have no idea what you are talking about.

"I don't care," Daena replied, reaching for her weapon, her glare never breaking from the demon who had once been her friend. "Give her back what you stole! Her power, her youth! You monster!"

She never saw him coming. All she knew was she was suddenly flat in her back, and her head was ringing, and Irwin's snarling face was filling her vision. _Where did he get that superhuman speed? He always had it, he's a demon, you fool,_ another voice said inside her head. _What did you expect?_ Crashing in the bushes told her help was on the way.

Irwin heard it too. "You brought friends? Lucky for you this time. Tell Matilda, you will see that this is only a dream when everything comes to an end." And in a flash of light, he was gone.

His words were still echoing in her head as Elazul's powerful crystal arm pulled her to her feet. She did not know the Jumi well, but she did not need to, to understand the anger that raged now in his eyes. "Irwin?!" he demanded.

"Yes," she told him, struggling to her feet.

"Yet another enemy," he fumed. "Does everyone seek only to destroy?"

"One would hope not... is he invincible?" she replied, shaking her head to clear the fog. Clarity returned slowly. "Destroy! He will! Fairies! Have to stop him!" And suddenly, as if her body had a will of its own, she was off and running again. Behind her she heard Ariesa's shouts of "Daena, no!" and crashing from two bodies tearing through the bushes after her. Branches scraped her, but they did not reach her skin through the fur, while they slowed the others down.

She didn't know what she was looking for, but she knew she would find it. And like magic, it appeared before her. A circle of fluttering faeries, already fading as every other fairy did when a human gazed upon them. But this many together... she could feel the Mana quivering around them, that touch of the Goddess, and it drew her like a moth to the flame, the same way she was sometimes drawn to Matilda. It felt like her friend somehow.

"Wait!" she cried, and dove into that center of power.

It enveloped her like warm water, and the cries of Elazul and Ariesa faded into the distance.

--

For once, Elazul was absolutely motionless. He might have wanted to hit something, but the presence of Ariesa restrained himself, and his first thought was worry for her.

She stood stunned for a moment, then plopped on the ground in frustration. "Daena... why?" she asked the air round them. "What will I tell Matilda? What are you trying to do? What's going on?"

The air wasn't answering, so Elazul guessed that meant he had to. Taking a moment of prissiness to sweep his sand mantle out of the way, he seated himself beside her. "Because she had a promise to keep. Same as we all do."

"You're right," Ariesa replied, and even cross-legged on the ground, her spine suddenly straightened a bit. Was she hard, or soft? She was so mysterious, he was never entirely sure. "But I still have to go tell Matilda."

"We," Elazul corrected.

"Huh?" she asked.

"We," he reiterated. "I made a promise as well, and I plan to keep it." Standing, he offered her his hand - the left, the one that was still warm flesh. She grasped the outstretched hand gratefully, and he felt her pulse within, blood racing.

_Was it him? Was it her?_ He didn't know, but he found his hand did not want to let go as he led her away from the lake, its surface only reflecting, revealing nothing more than before.

It made him think of Pearl, and that made him feel suddenly guilty, without knowing why.

--

Daena felt herself falling, falling through - what, she could not say. But strangely enough, she wasn't worried about what would happen when she hit the bottom.

She finally came to land on a bed of forest moss, her descent slowing at the last minute to set her down on the soft covering as gently as a baby. She couldn't resist leaning back for a second on the ground, looking up around her to gauge her surroundings.

Trees. Thick, dense, tropical trees, holding in the heat and sweltering humidity. It hit her. "I'm back in the jungle."

"Of course you are. It's the closest place to the land of the fairies," a voice replied.

Daena sat up to find herself face to face with a fluttering fairy. Perhaps one of those who had been in the circle she had so impulsively leapt into; but perhaps not. They all seemed to look the same.

"I am Lukanita. You were right to shun our location before," the fairy continued. "We don't appreciate strangers arriving unannounced into our domain."

Daena pondered that. "In that case, I guess I should apologize."

"No need," the fairy replied. "If you were dangerous, you would never have even found the circle of fairies, much less fallen through. You may as well consider yourself an invited guest now. I will take you to Lord Irwin. That is what you wanted, isn't it?"

_How did you know_, would have been Daena's question, but another beat it out. "_Lord _Irwin?" she replied. She'd been dying to ask about that.

The fairy nodded fervently. "Lord Irwin takes away the shadows that exist in us. He makes eternity begin. He is our only hope to regaining our selves, our rightful place, since Anuella is lost to us."

"Anuella never dabbled in the Underworld," Daena replied harshly. "You are creatures of the Goddess. What about her?"

The fairy's face hardened. "There is no Goddess. She is nothing but a myth anymore. The rest you can ask our Lord." She looked surreptitiously as Daena's flail looped over her belt. "Is that made of iron? If it is, you must leave it here."

Daena patted her weapon, the one she had named Ultraflog. "Ishe Platinum. The good stuff."

"Acceptable," the fairy nodded, and turned with expectation of Daena following.

"What's the big deal about iron?"

The fairy turned. "In the wars, the powers of the mages threatened us, but it was Forsena's weapons of iron that decimated us. Our magic was no match."

Daena pondered that in silence, as she stepped forward after her guide.

It was a strange, dreamlike path they followed, the scenery changing rapidly, sometimes subtly, sometimes lurching, and she would find herself now on the desert, next in the mountains. Worse still, when she turned around after one such transition, there was nothing of where they had come from visible behind her, either. She remembered learning the fairy world was a reflection of the real world, and distracted herself by trying to picture the maps of the world she had seen to figure out where they were going.

Finally it slowed, and she found herself walking a narrow strip of land, on which she could see the ocean on either side. It led for some miles, the width sometimes comfortable, probably a quarter mile or so, and other times becoming so narrow that waves lapped against her sandals. There were a few such strands in the world, she knew; bridges that had risen from the deep as Altena froze and the waters of the ocean dropped. They had changed the shape of the earth some, changing the focus of travel from sea to land. And there were only a few places which might be on the other end of such a strip, and only one which would have spilled over into the jungle.

Even as she arrived, it wasn't the visuals that triggered her realization, but rather a subtle change in the feeling of Mana that anyone who had grown up in Gato would have immediately detected through simple practice. And from knowing Matilda, her ability was more honed than most. She looked at the decayed stone buildings with withered jungle around them, and knew for certain what this city had been. "Mindas."

"Pedan, it was once called," recited the fairy. "A center of magic and a center of destruction, over and over again."

"Not an inappropriate place to meet a demon."

She contemplated the hush that surrounded her as she entered the remnants of the ancient city, pondering the ruined glory of what had once, twice, been a center of the world. As she entered, more fairies flickered up to greet the first, mumbling to each other agitatedly, as the first seemed to be explaining something to them, though in no language she could understand. She had an uncomfortable feeling that if the others were not convinced, she might find herself kicked out rather unceremoniously.

But her host was convincing, and waved her forward, leading her towards the ruins of the tower built during the wars. The Tower of Winds, it was called, though she had no idea why. A pair of those hideous spriggans guarded the entry, beady black eyes shining from within their globular, amorphous exterior. Her guide stopped.

"I will leave you here. The way is straight from here on out."

"You don't want to go with me?" Daena was suddenly alarmed.

The fairy bowed slightly. "It would be blasphemy to gaze on his face."

"Well, I suppose I've already blasphemed then," Daena said, shrugging, and started up the stairs.

Light trickled through the broken pieces of stone to guide her way along the ancient stairs, steps sometimes crumbling under her foot, nearly sending her falling down until she learned to test each one gingerly. It made for slow going, and gave her plenty of time to assume the worst.

At the top, she found Irwin.

He was looking away, over the ruins of Mindas, but as quietly as she tried to approach, he still sensed her and turned around. "Daena," he greeted her, as if had not attacked her just a short while ago. "I'm not surprised to see you decided to come anyway. Are you ready to be civil now?"

_It's for Matilda_, she reminded herself, gritting her teeth. "Yes,"

"In that case," he replied arrogantly, conversationally, "it's good to see an old friend. What can I do for you, Daena?"

"Tell me..." She took a deep breath and started over. "I would like to know what you are planning to do. Please."

"Isn't it obvious?" Irwin replied. "I am here to eradicate from the world the ugly seeds called humans. It is your fate to perish! You who have stolen so much from the land, isolated the fairies, made a mess of the Mana we have left."

"That is the role of the Goddess to determine," Daena replied carefully. "We only attempt to interpret Her plan."

"She'd better hurry up and fix it, then," Irwin replied with a hint of a snarl. "Otherwise, someone _else _will have to handle it. And once the Wyrm is released, there's no stopping it."

"The Wyrm?!" Daena exclaimed. Bastardized shadows, it was said, of dragons, summoned creatures infected with the underworld and bent on destruction. Few could control them.

And she had a feeling Irwin didn't plan to try.

"What about Matilda?" she challenged. "You'll let her die with the rest?"

"Of course not," Irwin replied. "She will be my queen, and solidify my hold on the fairy realm. They've looked after her for years, and they are ready now to bring her here."

"And put her in the hands of a demon?" Daena flared.

Irwin suddenly looked positively… bemused. "How little you know, Daena, about what faeries and demons really are. You think I need Matilda's powers to bend the fairies to my will?"

"Why else would you take them away?" she challenged.

"To make contact," Irwin replied. "You see, Daena… you may call me a demon, but I am the progeny of the fairies themselves. Of the dead king, Aion, who ruled the Underworld before the 'Wisdom' Olbohn took that away from him. The fairies need a direction, and who better than their returning king?" He laughed, a shrill, grating sound that scraped the air. "Be thankful if you never see a _true_ demon, Daena, one of those banished to the edges of the universe."

"No," Daena breathed. It _couldn't_ be true. Fairies, demons… there _was_ no connection… _Or is there?_ asked a small voice she was afraid to listen to.

He looked away from her once again, ignoring her obvious dismay. "Bring her here, Daena," he told the air in front of him. "And she will be safe once again, able to return back to her youth. You see, I am not so heartless as you may think."

Daena clenched her fists. "I will try," she forced out. _And maybe she can convince him to stop this madness in time._

"Good," Irwin nodded. "The fairies will await you at the bottom to escort you back to wherever you wish to go. Be sure to give Matilda my love," he concluded, and Daena couldn't tell if he was mocking or not.


	17. Secrets: Broken hearts

**17. Secrets: Broken hearts**

Jessica looked out of the Sand Fortress into the Valley of Navarre below. It was better to look out to the desert beyond, to the desert that was her home, her responsibility, than to let the expression on her face show.

"How do you like it?" Hawk asked.

"It's beautiful," she told him absentmindedly, fingers automatically going to the necklace he had brought her on this, his latest return trip to Navarre. She still did not meet his eyes, though.

The necklace was a fine aquamarine, in a setting of Rolantic silver, that set off her turquoise hair. A gift some part of her still wished could be more than the friendship gift it was.

She didn't need to touch the silver to remind herself. She and Hawk were long over. Hawk was _married _now. Not only that, but married to the queen of one of the most powerful nations in the world. And that made him a king, though ninety percent of the time Hawk forget that little detail.

They had _children _together. _Two_. Goddess, the second was partly named for _her_. And Lise was just so goddess-damned _nice _to indulge Hawk's naming.

Jessica mentally slapped herself. She was something akin to a queen herself, nowadays. Her father Flamekhan was sixty-three years old, and perfectly content to let his last remaining child run things. She was not truly a queen, any more than Navarre was truly a kingdom, but she had obligations, and she couldn't allow herself to be driven by such childish fantasies.

"What about all your other jewelry?" Hawk teased, grabbing her right arm. He knew from her who every one of those bracelets and rings came from.

"This one, I think," he said, fingering a bracelet of platinum. It was mined from deep in the Valley of Flames, one of the only metals that could withstand the surges of temperature there; an esteem gift from the man who had retrieved the ore himself. "That looks like you. He's the one."

"Jheran," she replied, yanking her arm away. And he probably was, but she understood now. She and Hawk might be long since over; perhaps they were never meant to be. Maybe it was the residual memories of Eagle that hung over them both, maybe something else, but even though he wasn't right, she knew she would never stop wanting him.

"You know," she finally said, "I always wanted to be a princess."

"I know," Hawk replied, teasingly, thankfully not bringing up all the other ugliness that has resulted.

"But being a queen is not the same at all, is it?" she asked him, her expression questioning. Hawk shifted a little uncomfortably, finally changing the subject.

"And all these poor other suckers," Hawk said, tapping her bracelets so they clanged together.

"They'll live," she replied brusquely.

"Heartbreaker Jessica," Hawk laughed. "That's what they should call you." And with a final chuckle, he turned to leave her alone, framed by the window and the setting sun.

Her hand went to the necklace once again. Heartbreaker Jessica, indeed. "You have absolutely no idea," she whispered to the desert air.

--

**Trivia: **LoM uses a material called Ishe Platinum. Ishe, in Sword of Mana, is the Land of Fire. Platinum is one of the only metals that can survive temperatures as high as, say, might be found in a place called the "Valley of Flames."

It's also quite expensive in LoM. Seems logical Navarre would find a way to profit off the stuff, huh? And retrieving a piece would probably impress a woman quite well.


	18. Legends: Star crossed lovers

**18: Legends: Star-crossed lovers**

"I'm sorry," Ariesa concluded, finishing the story.

This was the moment that she had been dreading, and still she wondered, if Elazul had not been there to practically push her through Gato's town gate, she might still have fled home.

He puzzled her, the Jumi. Sometimes he seemed as young as Bud, and other times...

"How old are you?" she had asked, suddenly, as they climbed up to the temple on yet another unpleasant mission.

"Ninety-five? Ninety-eight?" he replied. "I'm not sure."

"Ninety-something," she replied, half to herself. Technically, old enough to be her grandfather. But really, what did that mean, as far as Jumi were concerned?

Shaking off the distracting thoughts, she forced herself to pay the proper respect to the priestess.

She needn't have worried. Matilda barely seemed to ingest the news about Daena, in that half-conscious state in which she seemed to exist, somewhere between this world and who knows where else. "The land of the fairies... where Irwin is... I used to see fairies when I was younger, but Escad could not, so he would tease me when I was speaking with them."

"We could only see them for a second," Elazul volunteered.

"Indeed... fairies only show to those they extremely distrust, and few can see them unless they are allowed to, unless they have some Mana that lures them... Escad says he can see them somewhat now. We were just talking about that."

"Was he here?" Ariesa exclaimed.

"Who is Escad?" asked a puzzled Elazul.

"Who is he, indeed?" Matilda replied. "Who are any of us?" She sighed deeply. "I am so tired..."

"We will leave you, your Holiness," Ariesa replied firmly, addressing her words in Elazul's direction. Minding his manners, he caught her meaning, and together they let the doors to the dreamweaving room close softly behind them.

Ariesa pondered what Matilda had said. Why would Escad see the fairies now? Was he good, bad, or just confused, as so many were? Elazul turned towards her questioningly, but she wasn't in the mood yet to explain. She'd need a little time to relax, then she could fill him in. He, to his credit, did not press her, and they slowly ambled in silence towards the rooms they had been provided in the temple.

--

Matilda let herself slip into the dreamworld that nowadays seemed more tangible than reality. It was her solace. She was troubled over Daena, over Irwin, but on top of it all, it was those two that disturbed her, even though she had at first only met the Jumi for a moment. Something about her... something about him... and something more about the two of them together...

A fluttering above caught her attention. "Irwin?" she first asked, but then was suddenly ashamed.

The petite figure floating above her was certainly no demon, nor human. "Hardly," he responded. "But we haven't seen each other in quite some time either. Might as well catch up with all your old friends. Don't you remember Selva?"

"Wisdom Selva?" Matilda exclaimed, suddenly startled into clarity. "What do you want with me, to disturb my rest?"

The Wisdom laughed with a flip in the air. "Disturb your rest? Why, you're deep in slumber as we speak. The same way I used to talk to you when you were a child, when I brought the fairies to you. You had much more to say then. You lost something not only of power, but of yourself, when Irwin took those fairies away."

"You know about that?" Matilda asked, startled.

"Of course. I'm a Wisdom." Selva laughed gleefully, flitting from side to side like a hyperactive fairy. "Though sometimes it's tough, seeing an era about to end."

"The era's end?" the priestess questioned. "How would you know? Wisdoms see the future as well?"

"To a point. More accurately, we make our best guess. Ultimately, the future is decided by those who walk its path. You already trouble yourself with Daena and Escad. And others, yet unmet..."

"And the girl, the sprite?"

Selva looked at her, considering. "You thought so too? I hope so, but she's an anomaly... The Jumi is as clear as day, his core practically screams everything in his mind, but something around her _shifts_, is unclear... like she got sidetracked from the Goddess, and is only now beginning to find the path again."

"What will be, shall be." Matilda sank back to a reclining position.

"And so it is." Selva floated directly above her. "And, I think, it shall be that you will become a wisdom as well. The seventh Wisdom."

"The seventh Wisdom..." the words struck Matilda as she repeated them.

"Yes," Selva replied. "Now that Anuella and her powers are gone... but something in you is so like her, and no one else has such ties to the fairies. Perhaps you are the one who will end this era..." His glee drifted away momentarily, but returned so quickly that Matilda could have sworn she had imagined the sadness he showed.

She pushed the thought down. "I cannot. I am no Wisdom. Look at the trouble my own selfishness has caused."

"What selfishness?" Selva pried, as if he did not know.

"I..." She breathed. she had never said this before, not even to _him_. "I loved Irwin."

"And so you did. You are allowed to love anyone you want; what makes one wise is the choices one makes from it." He paused, as if remembering something himself. "People see only the shadows they make themselves... but there is no such thing as shadows, you understand, don't you? There is only the balance between dark and light."

"Balance? All my life I've only seen the shadows, and I expect nothing more." The trace of bitterness in her voice surprised herself.

"There is light within the darkness, even though sometimes one obscures the other… We have struggled for a thousand years to maintain the balance without the help of the Goddess, but she will rise again, and that is what you must see now. See only the future. The guilt locks your heart. Open your heart and forgive yourself. The flow of time is about to gain momentum once again, instead of the stagnation we have been locked in. The Goddess will return, and people will become free."

--

Daena strode through the familiar temple that was her home, heedless of the cries of "Madam!" that followed her. She only counted herself lucky she had not yet run into Ariesa and Elazul. She knew they would return here, yet still, she wasn't quite sure what to say to them, and she had to speak to Matilda before any other.

Bursting into the Dreamweaving Room, something she was one of the only ones who could get away with, she was taken by surprise at the sight of Matilda. Was her old friend looking more aged and sickly, or was it just her own troubles that clouded her vision and made everything look worse?

"Daena," Matilda uttered. It seemed even the simple word was a strain for the woman. "You've returned."

"Yes," Daena replied, bracing herself for the next sentence. "And you will be leaving."

"Where are we going, little sister?" The old, affectionate address brought tears to Daena's eyes. It did not make it easier to say goodbye.

"First, to the Mindas Ruins. Anything, away from here, but Irwin will meet us there."

"Irwin?" Matilda muttered dreamily. "You saw him, then? What did he say?"

"That he wants you with him." Daena took a breath. That was essentially what Irwin had said, just not in those exact words. "With him, in the land of the fairies."

"It would be nice to see Irwin... but... why would I want to go there?"

It was like talking to a wall, and even more frustrating than talking to that living rock Gaues. "Because the flow of time is different there. You can prolong your life, and... you are the only one who can stop Irwin's evil plan. He won't listen to anyone else, because we don't matter."

"Has the demon taken you, Daena?" said a familiar voice.

She turned, to see Escad silhouetted in the doorway. Another no one would turn away from the dreamweaving room, for who would think a Holy Knight might have evil intentions?

"What do you know?! What have _you _done for her?"

"I know that I fight for justice, and you aid demons against mankind," Escad sneered, with all the self-righteousness she had ever seen in him. "Is there more you want to add?"

"More than you will ever understand."

"So be it. Accept the path you have chosen, and I will finish off Irwin. You no longer need be involved in this matter."

"I'll make myself involved," growled Daena.

He was faster than she remembered. She never knew what hit her, as she fell backwards on the stone floor, a sudden sharp pain shooting from wrist to elbow. Or rather, she knew what, but not how, and found herself suddenly perturbed that two of her childhood friends had attacked her in the same day.

Daena wiped blood from her lip. "What you said about learning from a Wisdom was a lie, if you think violence is the answer."

Escad barely ingested that. "It is the _only _answer when dealing with the likes of Irwin."

"Irwin," Matilda sighed, attracting the attention of both. "How I wish to see you again..."

Daena felt it, and even Escad flinched. The priestess could only reach a pathetic amount of Mana, but she was building it nevertheless, and Daena could see how it was straining her.

"Matilda! You're not strong enough to cast spells!" she cried in a panic, as if it could be stopped.

Escad leaped forward, but his arms wrapped around empty air as the priestess disappeared in a flash of light. "The demon. She still follows him. But where has she gone?"

"I am afraid I know," replied Daena.

--

Matilda shifted slightly. Hard stone was under her. That was fine, that was something she was used to.

But she opened her eyes to see something else altogether. Not the familiar light dancing through the windows of the Dreamweaving room, but the tall walls of a stone tower, liberal pits speaking of advanced age.

Stairs reached upward in front of her. She pulled herself to her feet, her decrepit body protesting, and she wondered if her spell had been too weak to take her to the top, or if there was another reason. Every step up those stairs was torture in her joints, and it took an eternity to climb the tower.

But she had to go. There was someone she needed to see at the top.

"Irwin!" she cried, something jumping in her heart that she had not felt in years. She knew, though, she had never given up hoping that he had survived.

Irwin turned, and though she could see he looked different to her he was exactly the same, in that way that one's love always was. "Yet I have changed so much," she whispered.

His demon hearing picked it up nevertheless. "Only your appearance has changed, Matilda."

She finally allowed herself to meet his eyes. "It's not so simple. I have become quite dark and pessimistic, after all... yet still I cannot shake hope completely..."

He stepped towards her, awkwardly at first. "Your appearance is easy enough to change, Matilda. The land of the fairies reflects one's thoughts. You can form your own appearance by imagining it, the way we only think we can in the human world. As for the rest... with time, attitude can change, and wisdom emerge, if one is willing."

"Is that why you want to take me there? The fairies will not accept me! They think I betrayed them!"

Irwin growled. "That is only because you believe humans and fairies are so different. They will accept whatever I say, and they fear me no longer. It is _you _who will not. You accept the rule of heartless humans and sit idly by as they cause problems. Why do you exist in this world? Your life is not about walking the path others make!" His voice became quieter, almost pleading. "Come to the land of the fairies, Matilda. Your powers will be returned to you, and you can be queen by my side."

Matilda cringed at the criticism, and part of her was sorely tempted by his offer, but a nagging, pessimistic feeling took hold of her, even here, so close to what she had previously only dared to dream of. She realized, even if he gave her back her powers, it would always be _him_ that gave them back, she would always be walking a path that _he_ set for her, and that's when he realized the choice he gave her was no choice at all. "We don't always have a choice. The only choice I have is to be free."

"Then be free, Matilda." She felt chills as he reached for her.

--

After all the fighting and running around, Elazul found it a relief to just sit down for lunch.

Even if he had ulterior motives. He was certainly willing to help Ariesa in this matter, he felt as if he owed her a little bit; but he was starting to feel a little clueless about what was going on, and he wasn't entirely happy about being left in the dark. Especially when it took him away from Pearl for this long.

He nonchalantly plunked down the money for the meal. Jumi never lacked for money, with all the jewels - ordinary jewels - they had mined from their valley over the years. And Elazul had long since realized how greedy people were for jewels, either this kind - or the other, he thought, reaching towards his core involuntarily.

His companion gave him a grateful smile of thanks, her expression oddly both calm and exuberant simultaneously.

He had before thought Ariesa impossibly naive, but after she opened up a little, he found her hopefulness not nearly as annoying. Underneath, there was a streak of definite cynicism through it all. Frustration, fear at not having things turn out the way she wished the world would be. He couldn't help but relate; and he started to think, perhaps their fears were not so terribly unlike.

Her somewhat frivolous exterior hid a sharp and clever mind, he began to realize, as she slowly loosened up. "What's it like to have a guardian?" she asked him, before pensively dipping a fork back into her lunch.

The question surprised Elazul, and he found himself trying to put into words something that had been a part of him for so long that it had become as natural as breathing. "It's... It's a bond all its own. It's not romance, and it surpasses simple friendship. It's warmth, and obligation, in both directions. It's knowing you're a protector before you are a destroyer. It's knowing the life of your guardian comes before your own."

Ariesa stopped, utensil in hand, and listened intently, then paused to consider for one long moment, taking a sip of wine to break the silence. There was something in the way she dropped her eyes to the glass, then lifted them up to look at him with renewed intensity, that made him wonder what else might be under that mysterious-but-flippant facade. Perhaps his judgment of her required some revision.

On impulse, he reached out to tweak a hair-stick, and she giggled with a mouthful of liquid, triggering a coughing fit. But it broke the hushed mood, and as soon as she was done choking, she gave him a mischievous smile in return. She had the sort of pretty smile that made a man want to return it, and he found himself grinning before he knew what he was doing. Impulsively, he reached across the table to take her hand in his own. She gave him a quizzical look, lifting her brown eyes to meet his blue.

"Ariesa! Elazul!" A cry distracted him, and he looked up to see Daena running up towards them.

He pulled out a chair instinctively, and Daena plopped herself into it thankfully, panting, but forcing out the story between breaths.

"Where's Escad?" wondered Ariesa.

"Already on his way to the Tower of Winds, I imagine. I couldn't convince him there was any other way, though I tried to tell him to let Matilda and Irwin be. This is how well he took the idea," she said, showing a crudely bandaged arm, blood showing in places where it had seeped through the cloth.

Elazul looked at it in incredulity. "Jerk," he muttered.

Ariesa had an odd expression. "Matilda went to Irwin? Two torches, star-crossed lovers. So romantic. Like the story of Heartbreaker Jessica," she said.

Elazul was puzzled. "Isn't that a jewelry shop in Lumina?"

"How would you even know a jewelry shop in Lumina?" asked Daena.

Elazul tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "It helps to know which jewelry shops are the ones that sell Jumi cores."

"There's one of those in Geo, isn't there?" Ariesa suddenly realized.

"Yes," Elazul replied curtly, his former warmth turned off like a faucet. "So what's the story anyway?"

"It's a story of a desert princess who let the love of her life go, because she knew he was in love with a queen of another realm," Daena told him.

"I heard it differently. I heard the queen was an evil warrior who dragged the man away by force, and the desert girl was forced to only remember her lost love forever, though she never saw him again," Ariesa replied.

The two quickly descended into girl talk, until Elazul decided the tension-breaking moment was enough and they both needed to be shaken back into reality. "So, we're going after Irwin, right? That's the general idea?"

Daena looked suitably chastened at that. "We are. As soon as we can get our things together."

--

"We'll never reach her in time," Daena bemoaned, absentmindedly fingering the bandage on her left forearm that persisted despite the skills of the best healers. Travel from Gato to Mindas, even by magic, had improved neither the wound nor her temperament.

"She's right," Elazul murmured to Ariesa, the two walking together some steps behind the determined cat-woman.

"I know," she replied, and Elazul started at her frank answer. She had always been relatively unassuming and quiet about a situation until she was sure of things. For her to lack hope... it was a crushing blow.

"It's my fault," Daena moaned. "I should have never told her the meeting spot was in Mindas. If I had only known she would jump the gun..."

"It's not your fault," Elazul told her, trying the best to take the soothing role Ariesa might have filled otherwise. But his words did not have the same tone, the same calming quality.

Nevertheless, Daena let her fear wither slightly. "I suppose... But she left yesterday, and we landed far enough away that we've taken all this time to catch up... what could have happened?" Her look was faintly pleading.

Elazul had no answer. Dammit, at least he had tried this time.

The Mindas ruins loomed before them. To Elazul's surprise, fairies fluttered near the entrance. "They're letting us see them this time."

"I know," said Ariesa, now breaking her trance to tense in warrior's readiness, preparing for the unknown.

Daena greeted them first. "Lukanita, do you remember me?"

The fairy bowed slightly. "Indeed I do, human. I had not thought that you would return so soon. But it is of no moment. I cannot let you interfere!"

"Wait!" she cried, but the fairies paid her little mind. A faint tingle hummed in the air, and the surroundings seemed to cave in around them, fading to blackness.

When sight returned, there was still black, yet slightly less so. Elazul reached out a hand to find cold, stone wall. He was getting sick of teleporting, especially when it ended them in this dark, damp structure. At least the Mekiv caverns had some sort of personality, a difference the Jumi could sense. This was just forgotten stone.

Ariesa shivered, crossing arms across chest and rubbing them to bring warmth back to her body. Elazul had a sudden urge to wrap her in his arms, but then hesitated. "You cold?" he asked her, one hand to his sand-colored cape, ready to throw it over her.

"I'm fine," she insisted, but the look in her eyes was grateful nonetheless.

Daena, determined Daena, was already assessing the situation with a determination that made Elazul envious. "It's a one-way path," she announced brusquely.

"Then I suppose we go that way," Ariesa ventured nonchalantly, and Daena nodded. Elazul was briefly irritated they hadn't consulted him, but a quick flick of Ariesa's eyes showed her confidence in him. She trusted him not to argue when it mattered.

--

Ariesa had never liked the dark. It bothered her. Whereas the Mekiv caverns were filled with light and life, this was just murky remnants of man's creation. She found it made her sad. Like a memory she could not identify. Somehow, irrationally, she wished she knew more about what this structure had once been.

It was with an intense sense of relief that they finally emerged into the sunlight, looking past the megalithic structure to a tower in the distance.

"I feel something," Elazul said, unconsciously reaching towards his core. Daena nodded.

"I do too."

Ariesa felt suddenly very left out. She had absolutely no sense of Mana whatsoever, even though she had as much faith – or lack of - in the Goddess as anyone did nowadays, she thought. If only she could sense what they did. But she followed nevertheless.

"There used to be guards here, when I came to see Irwin," Daena mused pensively. "Spriggans. I wonder why they are not here now?"

Ariesa paused. "Perhaps we were expected this time?"

"Is that a good, or a bad thing?" asked Elazul. The women had no answer.

With trepidation, they climbed the steps into the Tower of Winds, only to find a familiar figure. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking pointedly upwards, until the clack of their footsteps drew his attention, and he swirled to meet them.

"Escad," Daena greeted him. "How'd you get here?"

"Probably the same way you did." He shrugged. "It's much easier to teleport one person here than several."

"A problem?" Elazul pondered, knight's instinct reaching for his sword.

The "Holy Knight" was nonplussed. "Who the hell are you?"

Elazul balked slightly. "Someone trying to help a friend. That's all."

Escad only laughed. "Protective. Foolish as a Jumi." Elazul could not restrain his flinch as he whisked the sword, and Escad's eyes widened. "Really? You are?!" He recovered slightly. "And how do you end up mixed in the problems of others?"

"How ridiculous you are!" Daena rebuffed him. "There is no difference between us. We are here to join, not to destroy. There is a much greater problem here, one that Matilda tried to tell you about, but you could never see!"

Escad's face grew hard. "You have become a demon like him, Daena, and your Jumi friend is only here to follow your lead. Neither of you understand. The demon must be killed, to keep Matilda safe. A one-handed sword? Isn't that a girl's sword anyway?" The last was directed at Elazul, as Escad drew his own heavy blade from the sheath strapped to his back, gripping it in both hands.

Elazul chafed from the insult, but was largely unimpressed. He quietly stood there, letting the power equilibrate between arm and sword.

"Stand back, Escad," warned Daena.

"No, Daena," Escad replied, slipping into a warrior's stance. "I cannot allow even you to stop me. If we do as you suggest…. It will be a miracle if you, or any of us, survive this."

"You can't keep me from Matilda," Daena said, and in one smooth motion, whipped her flail out and swung.

Her swing was easily blocked by four feet of broadsword, and the clang echoed off the tower walls. Elazul took a step forward, only to get a sharp reprimand from Daena. "No!"

He shrugged, and pulled back, ready to jump in should she need help, no matter what she said.

Daena was quick with her weapon, and the platinum was harder even than the worked silver of Escad's sword, which was the only reason why it took no damage as Escad easily blocked her blows. But she couldn't get near enough to score a clean hit, and the battle wore on.

Finally, impatiently, Daena pulled a daring maneuver, dropping to a crouch and rolling to swing for Escad's knees. Escad saw, and tried to correct, awkwardly, but he was not fast enough, and screamed as one of the heavy weights of the flail made contact. Elazul winced as he fell to the stones.

Daena leapt back up, but Escad managed a rough swing through the air, and the blade cleaved into Daena's side before falling to the stones as well with a clang. It was not deep, but it was enough to startle her, and give Escad enough time to pull himself to his feet. Elazul instinctively dove in front of Daena, who was pressing both hands to her injured side, stopping the bleeding with the bandage already wrapped around her arm. But before Escad could retrieve his weapon, a sword flashed and appeared neatly in front of his throat.

Ariesa leaned in closer from behind to whisper in his ear, but Elazul could hear her just fine. "It may be a girl's sword, but the girl using it could slice your life away right now."

"Enough!" cried Daena, one hand released from her side.

He was a good fighter, but not _that_ good, and that brief flicker of fear showed he knew he had been reprieved from death only by their goodwill. After a moment, though, he laughed, of all things. _Laughed_. "You have some skills, woman," he said, turning his head to get at least a peripheral view. "I get it. You win." Cautiously, Ariesa removed her weapon, fuming slightly, and Elazul turned his attention to Daena and her wounds.

He pulled her bandaged arm away gently to see that the blood had largely stopped. "How are you feeling?" he asked her.

"Ok, all things considered." She shrugged. "It wasn't that deep, but Goddess, did it bleed." She held up the splattered bandages to demonstrate. "But I am more worried…" Daena motioned upwards.

Elazul nodded. Escad was limping, but it did not look as if his kneecap had shattered, and Elazul reluctantly volunteered to help the bloodied knight along. Escad seemed annoyed, but accepted the help nonetheless, and Ariesa trailed nearby in case her aid was needed, as Daena led the way up the stairs to the top of the tower.

--

"Here!" she cried. "I know she's here, she has to be..." Tears fell into the fur of her cheeks, as she realized she was convincing herself.

And Ariesa was by her side, saying nothing, but somehow, Daena knew, hoping everything.

Behind her, she heard Escad's curses as he stumbled, Elazul clinging to him with that stone arm of his, and for a split second, she felt a giggle. Escad _had_ met a bit of a match, hadn't he?

The odd foursome made their painstaking way to the top of the tower of winds, to find a familiar, and lonesome figure.

"Where's Irwin?" Escad demanded. _As if he was in any state to be demanding anything_, Daena thought. Though she did wish Irwin was here, to take Matilda to the land of the fairies… she would recover, she would not die young...

Instead, Matilda wandered the top of the tower in that dream-state where the priestess seemed to live now. "It was so nice to see him... if only I could have gone with him..."

Escad was shocked. "Are you kidding me?"

Daena snapped. "That's what you should have done, Matilda! That's not good enough! Tell the truth, you love him!"

Matilda sighed, seeming every bit as old as she looked. Ariesa and Elazul were left to look at each other questioningly. "You do not understand, any of you, that true love is to let someone be free."

"But Irwin will use this 'freedom' to bring catastrophe! How many will lose their lives?! You have to stop him!"

Matilda took Daena's hand in hers, but Daena wondered how much of her "big sister" was left. "Then so be it. If that is what he chooses, I will accept it, and pray for him. Daena, I have come to realize that we can never do more than what we believe in, and I believe in leaving others to their happiness. Perhaps it is all part of the Goddess's plan."

"So what's Irwin's happiness? Destroying the world? What will he do now?" Escad burst in.

Matilda did not respond, but walked to the wall of ancient writing, that quivered at her touch, the tablet seemingly waiting to be read. "The Wyrm of Light, Lucemia. Summoned, but with a will of its own, it flew down from the skies and swallowed whole cities and forests.. finally burning to death after swallowing the volcano, Mount Bucca..."

"Ancient memories of the fairie wars..." murmured the somewhat-recovered Escad, as Elazul released him to stand on its own.

Matilda barely nodded. "History lingers on, as it is etched in our souls. The Goddess created all life. Her will is all, and her powers of Mana are everywhere."

"Please, come back to Gato," Daena begged. It was all she could now do. _Was this really what the Mana Goddess had decided?_ She ran to Matilda, only to find her frail body crumple into her arms from the overexertion.

"Oh, Matilda," she whispered so only the winds of the tower could hear.


	19. Secrets: Underworld

**19: Secrets: Underworld**

Olbohn crept into the fiery depths of the Underworld. As far as he knew, he was the first human to willingly descend into these decrepit tunnels, unless one believed the stories about the Archdemon who had burnt the tree. Utter foolishness, everyone knew it was Anise who had burnt the tree, and that was how she had created the eyes of flame; as far as he knew, though, she had never been to the Underworld proper, the demons had come to her.

He wondered if he would be the first to come back out.

Snaky spirits flitted around him, and the swordsman swung his weapon towards the one. Instinctively bracing for an impact, he nearly stumbled when it cleaved through the creature as if it was vapor.

That puzzled him. Whatever demons were, they could be fought as any other monster, and spirits still retained their native forms before merging with the cosmos. These things were neither. "What are you?" demanded the irritated swordsman.

It had an answer. "A Sha-a-dole," it announced in a gleeful singsong voice, tracing figure eights in the air leisurely. "Something out of Aion's thoughts. They say we're kind of like shadows, but even we don't know what we are! We take departed souls to the depths. Are you ready to go, newly dead?"

"I'm not dead," Olbohn protested gruffly. "But you can save me a walk and take me to Aion, Lord of the Underworld."

--

Aion perched on the edge of his throne, an ostentatious piece of carving that seemed to reflect its owner, the dour fairy-male who sat brooding on it now. He was a decrepit, wrinkly thing, wiry hair sprouting from a head that rose above limp wings, barely the height of a short human male.

"So this is what comes of the mighty Aion, king of the fairies," taunted Olbohn, as he looked on the object of his quest. "I thought fairies were female? And smaller?"

"Gender has little meaning for us. Custom, not biology," responded Aion. "Our descent is through the power of Mana itself, through our own dimension, not through the primitive reproduction you humans employ. As for the rest…" Aion grinned, revealing yellowed, rotting teeth. "We all shaped by our environments. Not an inappropriate look for being in the land of the dead, huh?" He motioned to the nearby environment for emphasis. "Doesn't matter. You are nothing more than an onion warrior," he replied, using the insult for the freshest and rashest recruits.

Olbohn ignored the insult. "How does a fairy get trapped in the underworld anyway? They should be immune to attacks by weapons."

"My mistake," Aion's laughter was ironic. "I let myself become a little too human, and lost some of the ability to rejoin Mana in death. Not so much, though, that I can't return to the living world if I wish."

"So what stops you?"

"I choose to take a different route through Mana. I rather like it here," Aion replied. "King of a whole new domain, where my thoughts create whatever I want." He snapped his fingers several times in the air, and with each snap another Shadole appeared, awaiting its master's pleasure. "I learned this from Anise, you know, how to twist Mana, after watching her do it over and over."

Olbohn's hand tensed on his sword. "That has Altena Alloy in it," noticed Aion. "A gift from her, I am sure. She must have held you in high esteem. And for you, how was it joining Anise's side? As well as that turned out, her forces broken, and her own daughter fleeing away from her. I've seen many of those mages come through here. I'm waiting for Anise herself so I can give her my best wishes."

"You're too late," Olbohn replied. "She's already gone."

"Indeed?" Aion seemed surprised at that, cocking an eyebrow. "I did not see her coming through here."

"I'm not surprised," Olbohn replied. "She used the magic of the underworld to lengthen her life, taking her afterlife up front. When she was done, she was pretty much done."

Aion sighed. "The Underworld is a stopover for those who aren't ready to move on, anyway. I suppose she was ready to go." He caught Olbohn's expression. "You're wondering about that? That's not what the underworld always was, you know. Before I got here, it was a place where demons only could go, and humans never could enter but obviously - " he pointed one gnarled finger at Olbohn – "a few things have changed around here."

"So you take advantage of it and have your vassals take living people down to the Underworld?" Olbohn chided. Some of those – Shadoles, was it? – giggled around him. "So, what, you can have more Shadoles? That's what I came to punish you for."

"If they choose to become Shadoles, that's their own business," Aion waved a hand nonchalantly. "They are the shadows of living things, though as a part of Mana, they share its consciousness. Perhaps that is what they desired? Only those who don't move on and let their spirit become free become Shadoles. I merely direct them afterward. The demons… I sent them to a place beyond the stars, to the dark matter of the universe, where the summoned creatures like the Wyrm Lucemia live."

"You are not dead, you have become a demon yourself," accused Olbohn. "You, and all your progeny."

"Perhaps so," mused Aion. "Maybe that is all the fairies are now?" He gave a laugh, a mad laugh. "Creatures of the Goddess no more. Better than being useless, I suppose. The magic of the Underworld is… neutralized, no longer chaotic, just dark, and you know not to fear the darkness, don't you? It is part of Mana, but not everyone can handle the power of Shade. It's inside yourself as well. Anise's great-grandmother knew how to use that dark magic safely. Anise couldn't be trusted with it, and I'm glad that even in death I was able to make a difference and cut her off from it. That's why you can come down here now. You see, I am still on the side of good."

Olbohn's grip tightened at every mention of Anise. "I fear no darkness, nor did Anise."

Aion scoffed. "At least, tell me, how did she die?"

"The seventh moon," Olbohn said mysteriously, but Aion only nodded.

"Giving up her chance at afterlife for more time in the human world. Was it worth it?" Aion mused.

"Don't know," Olbohn replied haughtily. "But I'm here to help finish her work, and remove you from the Underworld."

"Then let's see you try," Aion replied with a roar as his size increased, and from nowhere, it seemed, he pulled out a wicked-looking axe.

Olbohn felt himself seized with a splash of doubt as the monstrosity towered over him. He dove just in time to miss the strike of the huge axe, which cleaved into the ground and made the walls tremble.

He was no rookie, however; he was a swordmaster, and his mind was already calculating a plan of attack. That heavy weapon was a liability, in some ways; as every stroke ended, there was a pause Aion needed to recover, and prepare. Olbohn carried a two-handed sword; relatively heavy, but he was so practiced that it did not slow him down, and it was in those intervening moments that he struck.

Aion roared as Olbohn dove in to neatly slice the back of his legs. The fairy king tried to rotate his huge and bulky form, only to find that the human swordsman had evaded him once again.

Inward and outward Olbohn wove, feeling as if he was only achieving cuts on the monster's body, but he was progressively wearing his foe down. Aion was slowing, and Olbohn was hitting more frequently.

Finally, a well-placed backslash left Aion falling forward, and his grip on the illusion itself, as he crumbled, and fell forward to shrink back into the form in which Olbohn had first seen him. "How?" Aion asked. "How is it you beat me?"

Aion was a pathetic sight, as all the slender cuts Olbohn had inflicted on his larger form were now vicious gashes that criss-crossed his body. "Because you were thinking only of your own victory, and I was thinking of what I wanted truly to achieve," Olbohn replied grimly.

Aion only nodded, too exhausted for more. "I understand. No matter. Perhaps it was my time to return to the flow of Mana. Do it, then," he finished.

Olbohn lifted his sword in both hands, and with one mighty swipe, drove it through Aion's neck. But at the same instant that it cleared, before the decapitated head could fall to the ground, Aion disappeared in a shower of sparkling multicolored motes. He felt the odd, intangible presence he had so often felt around Anise. _This must be the feeling of Mana_, he thought to himself.

The Shadoles gathered around the spot where their master had fallen, twittering among themselves. "What now? What now?" he heard their high-pitched voices say over and over again.

"What now?" Olbohn replied. "Simple. I am the new keeper of the Underworld, and manager of departed souls. You are all mine now, and the first thing I want you to bring me is a mirror." Colorful Shadoles rushed to obey, and somehow out of nowhere one was produced.

Olbohn looked at his face in the mirror, a plain, nondescript human visage. He was not so terribly attached to it. "I need something better than this face," he murmured. "Well, an onion warrior he called me, so an onion warrior I shall be." Drawing on the power of the Underworld, he changed it as he watched his reflection, eyes appearing over a now-bulbous head so he could see in all directions.

He examined the effect. Monstrous. He liked it.

"Anise," he said to himself, "however you left us, those who believe in you live on." The Shadoles around him wiggled in agreement.

--

The denizens of the Underworld were numerous, but Olbohn paid them little mind. He had been in the Underworld for a year, by his estimation, and he had quickly become accustomed to it. Shattered souls that had not yet moved on, destined to eventually disappear as acceptance was reached, or continue to deny it and become Shadoles as the last vestiges of life faded away. As long as they did not get out of hand, he cared little.

Some, however, were much more stubborn.

Olbohn had at first ignored the small, red-haired and robed man who shuffled towards him, figuring the dead soul would move past him quickly enough. To his surprise, the soul headed straight for him, positioning himself firmly in Olbohn's path.

"Lord of the Underworld?" he inquired.

"Go on, lost soul," Olbohn scolded. "Do not come to me asking to be returned to life. It cannot, and will not, be done."

"Perhaps you do not know who I am." Cruel blue eyes squinted towards Olbohn, but his tone of voice was almost whining. "I am Drakonis, the one who was once called the Dragon Emperor."

For perhaps the first time in his tenure in the Underworld, Olbohn was taken aback. _Dragon Emperor_? That was a name of history, as was the stories of the Archdemon. It couldn't be… could it? If it was true, then the soul of Drakonis had clung to limbo for over a hundred and fifty years, without being taken by the Shadoles. He had a hard time believing that.

"What do you want from me?" he demanded of Drakonis.

"Perhaps you could say… an alliance?" Drakonis replied. "Or maybe that is too strong a term. Maybe, I could say, more of an understanding?"

Olbohn remained silent, waiting warily. The Dragon Emperor was a figure of destruction from the past, who had infected Altena until Anise's ancestor, the great Queen Angela, had destroyed him. Whatever deal Drakonis proposed, it was a deal with a devil, in more ways than one.

"Perhaps it would help if I showed you something," Drakonis replied. "Come."

It was a command, not a request, and curt nonetheless, but Olbohn could not afford to _not_ find out more, and he reluctantly followed the man who had once been the Dragon Emperor.

Drakonis led him through deeper and deeper tunnels of the Underworld, places Olbohn had not yet cared to explore, figuring had all eternity to do so. They passed through gate after gate surrounded by stone, silent faces, not trapped souls as one might think, but remnants of memories of pain, of hate, of all the seven sins. Like artifacts, in a way, but dramatically different nonetheless.

Those faces did not acknowledge his own presence, but they responded to Drakonis, seeming to shrink back, and a passage appeared.

Beyond, the cavern opened into a lake of flame, and Olbohn gave an involuntary start. Not just from the sight, but from the sudden, overwhelming sensation of Mana that flooded him, somewhat like his own memories, but stronger than he had ever experienced from Anise. "Where is this?" he burst out.

Drakonis only smiled, a disconcerting, nasty expression. "The pulpit of eternal flame. The home of the Mana Stone of Fire."

"The Mana Stones are gone," Olbohn said insistently. "Only a legend, now."

Drakonis spoke nothing in response, merely turned to the churning lake beyond, reaching forward with both hands, and Olbohn felt the surge of Mana. Time seemed frozen for a long moment in the face of that flow.

It sang, a sweet song of Mana, until finally, as it approached the moment of climax, there rose from the lake of fire a small, shining entity, barely the size of a fist but with power that radiated across the world.

Olbohn did not need to ask. "That's a Mana Stone," he said. "But how?"

"A new one. For a new Goddess." Drakonis smirked. "And I guard it."

Olbohn racked his brains for the stories of the past. "That's not possible," he finally replied. "The Stones are the responsibility of the elemental spirits. Where is Salamando?"

"Hiding," Drakonis replied. "As are the others, as well they should be. Without their connection to the Goddess, they are weakened, helpless, as the fairies are. You know, do you not? You fought the fairies."

Olbohn _did_ know. He had followed Anise because she was offering something new, something real, unlike the pathetic fairies who were only shades of the past.

"The dragons guard the Stones now. It is the only hope," Drakonis said with finality.

"Why would they let _you_ guard one, then? You are not a dragon, just a human who made himself in that image," Olbohn said harshly, caring little if that sounded rude.

Drakonis raised one finger to Olbohn's face. "Because they know power, and they know I have it. Perhaps they are even jealous of what I have. In any case, they needed me, needed someone with the strength to guard the Stone. They hold me, restrained, but they need me."

Olbohn pondered. _A deal with the devil, indeed._

"So, the point of the matter," Drakonis continued, "is that I need… your protection, shall we say. You can control the dead down here, but not any living that might creep in. You see, obviously, that we cannot afford some random hero from the world of the living trudging down here to attack me, now can we? It would completely disrupt the balance of Mana."

"True," Olbohn said, thinking. The entire scenario bothered him immensely, but the words were true, and the point valid. He had to protect and maintain the Underworld, and everything within it, and that made this his responsibility. "Protection, you say? You shall have it."

--

She had lost track of the time she had been out here, in the cliffs south of Forcena, all alone, driven by one form of single-minded determination, and that was to defeat the enemies of the Goddess.

Blackpearl could not believe she had finally located her quarry. The fairies had been hounding her for years, but had not been able to pinpoint her – until now. Anise looked haggard, driven, with the hint of madness.

Despite herself, Blackpearl felt pity for this woman. She had known Anise as a child, after all, but even then the sorceress had shown little of the great-grandmother she had never known, and was already turning out nothing like her cousins. How had she gotten where she was now?

But the Goddess's will - or lack thereof - worked in strange ways, and it was pointless to worry about what happened then. Blackpearl raised her hammer for the killing blow.

A flash of flame, and a sharp pain suddenly shot through her, rattling even into her core. But the Holyland fights in the War of the Tree had sharpened her reflexes so she recovered quickly. She hadn't been burnt, but rather the force had been directed against the hammer and flung her against the rocks behind with it. She bounded to her feet in a split second.

Only to find Anise now standing eye to eye with her. "Blackpearl," she sneered. "What does your mother think of what you have become? You could have been a healer, a priestess."

"My mother knows, unlike you, that we must accept where Mana leads us." Blackpearl touched her free hand to her core, and its pearlescence swirled in response. Was that a hint of jealousy in Anise's eyes?

Anise recovered herself quickly enough. "Shayla, you fight against the mages, the group that most wants to keep Mana in this world."

"Don't call me that," Blackpearl replied reflexively. "I am someone else now, and I am here to protect my kind, and you threaten us with your twisting of Mana. Keep twisting it, and true Mana will not survive. The Eyes are stronger than our cores individually, but together, my people are the last hope until the Goddess returns."

Anise sneered. "Mana may be from the Goddess, but we were the ones who learned to control it to make magic, and we can do so again, controlling whatever forces we can find. It's all ours now, yet you control nothing but that piece of stone by your neck."

Blackpearl fingered her core automatically, surprised Anise could even detect the source. What was in that core, its Mana, was not what Anise believed Mana to be. The Altenan queen herself had told her what Mana meant, long ago, before Anise had ever been born. "Angela knew you did not force Mana, it allowed you to control it. She would never have survived otherwise."

Anise flinched at the mention of her idolized ancestor. "I'll show you what can be done."

"I am ready," Blackpearl replied.

She had barely an instant to prepare herself before her core warned her of the surges of Mana, and Anise's spells rained down on her. Walls of flame, lightnings, twisted thorny branches reaching to grab her. It was all she could do to avoid the attacks against her.

Blackpearl ran around the corner, past a rocky outcrop, catching her breath as she was out of sight of Anise. Completely on the defensive, she had no chance to win.

Her core sang a low, irritated song, bothered by the streaks of Underworld magic that permeated Anise's spells; and idly, Blackpearl wondered what it might feel like to experience the luxury of a spell of pure Mana.

That gave her an idea. She reached into her core, touching it with her free hand, and reached for the power it contained, and it responded.

Anise's voice could be heard around the corner. "Lady Blackpearl? Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

Blackpearl took a deep breath. _I hope this works_, she thought to herself, as she stepped out into the open.

She saw Anise's face, gleeful, as the sorceress tensed for another round of spells. Blackpearl braced herself for the upcoming impact, as her core whispered in a comforting way.

She stood her ground as the assault rained down on her, but inches away, the spells… shattered… and her core burned with the insult of the tainted Mana nearing it. Anise looked on in shock.

"How…" she gulped. "How did you do that?"

"Mana," Blackpearl said, and ran for her.

Anise grabbed her skirts and fled. She was a slender, and agile woman, and as she clambered over rocks and rises, despite her own endurance, Blackpearl found herself struggling to keep up, particularly with a heavy hammer in her hand. Eventually, however, Anise came to a screeching halt, as she ran straight into a dead end.

Blackpearl slowed, approaching her quarry. Anise, now on the defensive, cringed in fear.

The hammer was a difficult weapon to master. Heavily powerful, it seemed difficult to manage with finesse, unless one had enough time to contemplate it, as Blackpearl had. The trick was to aim for a target, and to strike true, lest an unfocused swing missed and left one open in the recovery.

She aimed for one such target now, and even as Anise twisted, the hammer collided with her arm, shattering the bone of her forearm. Anise screamed in pain, and Blackpearl winced despite herself.

Still, the sorceress held her feet, and dove to flee again, until Blackpearl's hammer swung forward to collide with her shin, sending her tumbling to the ground. One of the hammer's wicked spikes cut into the flesh of her leg, tearing away skin and ligament as Anise tried to wiggle away. Part of Blackpearl cringed even as the hammer whooshed through a blow to land on the base of Anise's spine.

The sorceress wailed, a poignant sound that echoed through the grasslands below, as she rolled onto her back, eyes wide with shock. Blackpearl was amazed, knowing the amount of pain she must be enduring, that she managed to remain even slightly aware. Sobs burst out, every one painful, so her cries were punctuated by screams that imprinted themselves on Blackpearl's mind.

She could do nothing, she knew, and slowly Anise became quieter, almost calm. Either she had accommodated, or no longer cared, it did not matter. Blackpearl felt pity for her opponent, to find her powers so thoroughly disrupted. It must be a humiliating revelation that came too late for the twisted sorceress.

Anise looked more a withered shell than ever, and now admitted defeat even to herself. "You know, you were right," she told her. "I wished I could have found the real source of Mana. I would have taken the tree itself, if I could, however pitiful it may be right now. But it was locked away from me, and I could not find the key, it was already gone."

"The key?" Blackpearl was puzzled.

"The key to the Tree itself, that opens the barrier," Anise replied. "The barrier once protected the entire Holyland, but now barely holds the tree. The key is the Sword of Mana."

That jogged a memory, but it had formed only a small part of her mother's and aunt's stories. She dredged for the information. "It was the power of the Goddess, but they couldn't use it directly."

"They never tried, and after the Goddess died, there was no need. Too many tried to take it and use it, to make Mana bend it to their will, and our relations only wished to save what was. But if we want Mana back, we may have no choice. You may want it too, before your kind runs out of Mana."

"We're increasing in number," Blackpearl protested.

"But for how long? Your number will become finite. They join the wars as you did, and heal with their tears, giving away bits of themselves. Generous, I'm sure, but it will catch up with them."

The last sent chills down Blackpearl's spine. Truthfully, she had not thought so far ahead as to see what Anise saw so clearly. The sorceress was nothing if not practical.

Anise sat up abruptly, pushing herself up on her good elbow and wincing at it all, to yank on a handful of Blackpearl's silk cloak. "Join my mages," she said abruptly. "They deserve their chance to save Mana in their own way, and if you disagree, you can make a difference from within. You have Mana now, you can teach them, show them the difference between what they pursue and the real thing. But most of all, you need to know how your kind can survive, and if you promise to join them, I will tell you how to find the Sword, whenever you might need it."

Blackpearl hung her head slightly. _Whatever was needed to preserve the Goddess. _"I promise," she replied.

Anise smiled, a smile of one who was neither friend nor enemy, only one who was satisfied. "The secret is in the core," she replied. "The sword will find you, and it will be more pulled to you the stronger you are. Or any of your kind powerful enough. But without it, a new era cannot begin, because it is needed to release the new Goddess."

"I will keep the promise, but it doesn't change the fact that I was sent here to defeat you," Blackpearl said.

"I know," replied Anise, her broken arm stretching upwards, almost as if without her knowledge. "There's just one thing I ask for now."

"What's that?" Blackpearl asked warily.

"Let me touch it," begged the dying sorceress. "Let me feel just once what pure Mana is."

Blackpearl knelt down by the other woman, and lifted her hand to her own collarbone, easing up on the guards she placed around her own core. As the fingertips touched the living stone, the eyes of the mage grew clear, peaceful, the madness draining away as had never been seen in her life before; and then the life drained away as well.

Lady Blackpearl eased down the hammer she had held poised in case Anise decided to make a mad grab for her core. But somehow, it had turned out to be unnecessary. "Maybe all I know now is how to fight," she whispered to the empty air, "but now I know I can heal."


	20. Legends: Heaven's gate

**Author's note and trivia: **Whew! This chapter took a _long_ time to put together, edit after re-edit to make it all fit together, with itself and the rest of the story.

(Meerf pours a glass of wine in celebration)

"Heaven's Gate", besides being the actual name of the LoM quest (for those of you who didn't know), is also the name of a movie that did so badly that the term became synonymous with total failure. It was also the name of a religious cult that believed the Earth was about to be wiped clean. Appropriate to the story, no?

Personally, I just like the parallel of "heaven", used ironically, to the Underworld, the subject of the preceding chapter.

--

**20: Legends: Heaven's gate**

Matilda tossed on the stone bier that had been her bed for so long.

It was tough for Ariesa to watch, and looking around at her companions, she knew they felt no better. Daena, kneeling by the side of her "big sister." Escad flinched every time he looked at her, the man as tight as a rope. And Elazul tried to hide in the room's shadows, pretending it did not concern him, but flickers of worry were visible on his features every time the light caught them.

The torches burned their quiet flames. _Faeries'_ _light_, she remembered Rubens saying, and she wondered if, whatever happened, if fairies were watching over Matilda still, in their own way; she wondered if they still cared for her, or anything having to do with humans. Was that really all there had been to Matilda's power?

Without knowing why, those two torches made her want to look at Elazul, and wonder about him as well. He seemed so young, yet so old, in so many ways, worn down by his search… and when it came right down to it, was what he wanted to find, so different from what Matilda looked for? Or any of them, for that matter?

_Or what she wanted for herself_, she finished in her head.

The abbess seemed to be spending less and less time in reality, and none of them could deny they were seeing a dying woman.

"The Wyrm of Light, Lucemia..." she muttered, repeating what she had read on the Tower of Winds. "It descended to earth and swallowed seven cities. It burned itself to death, swallowing a volcano."

She tossed again, and Ariesa wondered if she was indeed talking to them, or to who knows what else. She had been muttering about Lucemia for days - and nights, apparently, as someone was now left to watch over her at all times.

"Cities dying, people screaming... even now its hard shell exists, hundreds of years after its death, and Irwin will revive the creature to bring chaos to the world once again. All is doomed!" Matilda gave a cry in her sleep.

That part was new. Ariesa tensed and looked at her companions, Escad's anger mirroring Daena's, and Elazul so stone-faced that his lack of expression said it all.

"I do wonder what will become of the world," Matilda sighed, stirring slightly in the beginnings of awakeness, as if the energy and worry had suddenly drained out of her when it passed to the others in the room.

"Then why didn't you stop him?" Daena said, half hysterically. She was on a razor's edge, and it was taking all her effort to hold herself together, the strain visible in her tensed muscles and tired eyes.

Recognition flickered, and Matilda opened her eyes hazily, but turned to focus on Daena. "Why, Daena?" murmured Matilda. "I love him. I cannot hold back the one I love. Perhaps we cannot have happiness together, but I will let him have his freedom, and that will be enough."

"But don't you want to be at his side?" Daena shrieked. "You _can_ be together! It's not too late to go to the land of the fairies!" She swiveled her head back and forth as if she expected to find some of those fairies hidden in the corners of the room.

"Daena… it does not matter where we are. Our souls are always together, even as our bodies were far apart. That is what love is." Daena reached up to her head with balled fists, looking very much as if she wished to tear her fur right out.

"Don't bother, Daena," Escad interjected. "I'll take care of this. Let Matilda rest."

"Like hell I will," Daena retorted. "This may be my last chance to talk to her."

"Well, then, do whatever you want. Meanwhile, apparently, the future of the world is in my hands." Predictably, Escad stalked out.

Matilda was now awake and coherent, but Escad had strode out of the room before he could see Matilda pleadingly stretching out a weak hand to him, holding it a moment in the air before she let it drop once again. "You are right, Daena. These will be my last words, please listen. The soldiers of the empire fight, and hurt others because they are ordered to do so. The fairies hate the humans because they were hurt first. The mages and core hunters hurt the Jumi because they desired their power for themselves. Who is the most sinful of them all?"

"They're all stupid." Ariesa snickered when she saw Elazul nod agreement.

"None is sinful. It was the goddess who gave us freedom, freedom we use for what we call 'good' or 'evil'. She is both, and neither, and to deny the freedom of others, to deny the possibilities of the Goddess's plan working in mysterious ways, is the true sin. One must know _truth_."

"Then is Escad right to kill him? Is that what I should aim to do as well? Is there no right and wrong to all of this?"

"Right and wrong are the ways we try to guess the will of the Goddess, but in truth, who can know what is meant to happen?" Matilda replied, eyes growing clear, almost fervent. "How can we truly know what is meant to be? Perhaps that which we label as 'wrong' is still part of the whole, and we cannot reach what is 'right' without it? Without Her to guide us, all we can do is try to follow our own desires and hopes."

Daena did not look convinced . "What about you? What are you hoping for?"

Matilda sighed. "I hope nothing more for myself, I only worry for others now. Once I am sure that you, Irwin, and Ariesa remain free... then the curtain will fall on my role in this world."

"Why me?" Ariesa burst out. Matilda's worry for the others, understandable, but what did _she_ have to do with anything? Elazul raised an eyebrow.

"I do not have an answer, Ariesa," Matilda told her softly. "I cannot tell where, but I know once you find your place in this world, you will have everything that you can imagine to contribute."

_Imagination_. That word again. And Ariesa didn't have the slightest idea what she was supposed to be imagining.

Daena was openly crying. "You're only twenty-six, there is so much left to do in life! Don't leave me! I still want to be your little sister!"

"You can do as you please, Daena. Take this with you." From within her robes she pulled a small piece of jewelry, pressing it into Daena's hands.

"What is it?" Daena opened her hands to reveal a gilded brooch, inlaid with precious gemstones. "There's something… I can almost tell…"

Elazul reached for it, and after a pause, Daena reluctantly handed it over. He turned it over, once, twice, three times, studying it. "It's an artifact," he murmured.

"It is," the priestess replied. "An old memory of the powers of love. A promise to acknowledge all, understand all, overcome any ordeal for that love…" She paused, as if remembering the ordeals she had endured. _And it still didn't bring her to the one she wanted_, Ariesa thought. "It will lead you to Irwin, and then you may decide for yourself what you wish to do. May the Goddess's blessing be with you, and may you all live to see the new era."

And Matilda slipped into silent unconsciousness.

--

The brooch had a pull of its own that Daena seemed to understand, leading them through the Gato caves ever higher up, past the waterfall that tumbled somewhere eventually into the Mekiv Caverns, to the peak where the nest of the Cancun Bird was.

"It's the only way," she insisted. "Lucemia swallowed the volcano of Bucca, in the middle of the ocean… we'll never get their in time any other way."

Ariesa and Elazul watched with fascination as the gigantic rainbow bird, the stuff of legends, calmly came down from its perch at Daena's signal, _quorking_ in a peaceful manner and bowing its head for the three to climb on. Ariesa found herself positioned behind Elazul, in front of Daena, and as the giant bird began flapping his wings, she threw her arms instinctively around the Jumi for support. He flinched briefly, but then relaxed slightly against her, and Daena's soothing words seemed to keep the bird calm and directed as they soared into flight.

Ariesa loosened her grip slightly as she realized the bird's flight was much smoother than she could have realized, and she permitted herself to enjoy the scenery as they soared over first the lake area, then the mountains beyond, at the border of the Empire of Forsena, and then over the ocean itself. She had lost herself completely in the view, and forgotten as well she was still clinging to Elazul, until he shifted slightly in front of her.

"There's something down below," he said, and she leaned a little further to look directly downward.

In contrast to the peaceful blue ocean surrounding them, the island beneath them was completely overtaken by an enormous skeleton, a hundred times larger than the bird carrying them, its sun-bleached bones coiled around itself. It rested not on the land itself, but some distance above, the dead thing floating eerily in midair, surely the work of Irwin.

The bird _cawed_ in a worried sort of way. "It says it can't take us to the top!" Daena cried as the bird suddenly swooped downward. "Something is stopping him – I'm sure it's Irwin."

"Then we start at the bottom," Elazul replied grimly.

Daena murmured something to the bird, and it slowed, finally landing only long enough to give them time to dismount. It chirped once more, a sad sound this time, before launching itself into the air once again. "It will come back to get us," Daena responded soothingly, and Ariesa wondered if worry was plastered that obviously over her face.

As it flew off, they stopped to take note of their surroundings. There was little to see but the decrepit skeleton, dead bones and dead silence all around, and no way to go but up. Clouds stretched overhead, giving a distinct chill to the air this high up. "This way seems as good as any," Ariesa suggested, motioning to a crack in the skeleton that led to the interior.

The others nodded their agreement, and they stepped inside to begin clambering up the interior, inside of the long-deceased monster, sunlight reaching between the brittle ribs and fossilized membranes, so old they had faded to a pale blue, to light their way. Lichens and fungus had grown over the bones as if on rock, lending the only sense of life to the place. Above them was a series of discs, the spinal cord, and it was that they followed to make their way to the beast's head.

"What kind of path is this?" pondered Elazul, irritably.

"The avenue of deterioration," announced a small voice. "Where Lucemia was burnt by the volcano to become a stone shell to remind us of the ravages of wars."

They turned to find a fairy flitting a small ways behind them. "The brooch…" she murmured. "It reminds me… so many things past, lost. You of all should know, Jumi, your city, all your history deteriorated into nothing once again, crumbled into stones, and the path we travel has nothing, nothing left."

Ariesa had a thought. "So that is why you follow Irwin?"

"We seek the same thing that the rest of you do. To survive, not to be lost in the cosmos. To have meaning."

"Why are you letting us see you?" asked Daena.

"It hardly matters," the fairy replied. "I doubt you will be making it out of here again." With that, and a quick twirl, she had left again.

Elazul had not looked at the fairy since she had brought up the Jumi city, and he was now studiously gazing at a nondescript spot on the wall. Ariesa placed one hand on his left forearm, and he practically jumped, before turning to her.

"We have to keep going," she told him softly. "I have a feeling it's the only way out."

He nodded, and shuffled some feet behind her, she hoping her presence was at least some iota of comfort.

They finally emerged into sunlight once again, now much higher and the ball above much brighter. Ariesa closed her eyes and only basked in that warm glow for a moment. "Like a soft embrace," she murmured, sighing in contentment.

"It is. The embracement of the ancients. The memories of what we once were, and what perhaps we may be again."

Elazul pulled closer to her, sword at the ready, as she opened her eyes to see a circle of fairies surrounding them, no doubt having been warned by the first. Behind, there were more of those ugly bodyguards, the spriggans, manner poised to attack if one of their charges gave the word.

Daena's tail twitched, but she spoke powerfully. "Where is he, fairies?" she demanded.

"Irwin? What is it to you?" asked one.

"I am here to save Matilda from what he did to her."

"Matilda?" The name seemed to perturb the fairy. "She is one of the ancients, indeed."

"She's only twenty-six," Daena replied stubbornly.

"But you do not see what I see," insisted the fairy. "She has… connections… to Mana itself, that cut deeply. We have been watching her ever since she was a child, hoping to bring her to us. If Irwin can do that as he promised…" She left the sentence hanging.

"Then let him do it, Goddess damn you!" Daena exploded. "Have him take her away, have her recover. She is dying, and you are prattering to me about how important she is!" A Spriggan rose slightly, poised for attack.

"It's not so simple," the fairy told her, ignoring the outburst. "She will not leave this world, so Irwin seeks to destroy it. You know the past of the Wyrm whose skeleton you traverse? It took apart half the world. For Irwin, nothing less will do."

"How can you tie yourself to a demon like that?" Elazul asked, his voice deathly quiet.

"Because," one fairy told them, "he is not a demon as you think of them. Not truly, those were banished to beyond the stars by Aion, our king, the one who helped us to save the Tree from Anise… but Aion went to the Underworld as his sacrifice. Now, he comes back to us as Irwin."

"I think it's true, Irwin told me the same," Daena said. "I didn't think it was possible, but we never did know where he came from…"

"It is true," the fairy insisted stubbornly. "Selva has told us so."

"The Wisdom Selva?!" exclaimed Daena. "What does he have to do with any of this?"

"He has been by the side of the fairies for centuries, in life, as beyond. He does not see things so simply as you do. He knows the Goddess has a greater plan," she insisted with a note of finality.

"Greater plan?" fumed Elazul. "Difficult to believe, if there won't be a world for her to plan on."

"Is Selva _here_?" Ariesa interjected. "Can we talk to him?"

"Why certainly," the fairy replied. "In fact, I will take you to him myself." A small gesture, and her companions shrank back, almost seeming to merge with the bones as they disappeared, leaving only the one.

She trailed behind them for some time, all in silence, until they reached a broken path. Ariesa made as if to clamber over the shattered bones, resolving not to look where she would fall to if she slipped.

"No," the fairy told her. "Not that way." She motioned to a crack so neatly concealed that none of the humans had noticed. They stepped inside to a refreshing coolness, grateful for it after the hot sun outside, and they paused a moment to catch breath, before walking forward once again. The path curved sharply right, the fairy silently twinkling in front of them, until they emerged again, ever higher.

"Why would anyone summon something like this?" Daena wondered, looking at the skeleton visible up and below, its enormity somehow even more awing in the middle that from the air.

"The dragons. To protect us. To aid us. To allow us to regain our decayed dignity, once heirs to the Goddess, now nothing more than weaker beings who struggle to survive and preserve what must be preserved. You have no idea what it is like, do you? A world that was filled with hope that the new Goddess would come to replace the old, that hope shattered by the actions of humans. Greedy, conscienceless humans, who think only of themselves, and forget the way of Mana. Ancient, proud kingdoms, Altena, Rolante, lost on the winds of time. Irwin is right to want the humans destroyed."

"Then why doesn't he just do so?" Elazul demanded. "Why this farce, making us come to him? If he has that much power, he could have taken us out wherever we are."

"Because he's toying with you," came a voice, followed by a mirthful laugh, and they turned as one. A clownish figure flitted above the sun-bleached corpse. "Wisdom Selva!" the fairy greeted him, floating over to give a small midair bow.

"I know," Daena replied.

"Of course he is," grumped Elazul.

"Why?" asked Ariesa.

"Well, perhaps," Selva said thoughtfully, "he wants to see what you are made of. Or perhaps he just wants you to suffer? Whatever he is doing, it is all for Matilda."

"What do you know about Matilda?" asked Daena carefully.

"I'm rather fond of Gato, myself. I've been in and out of there for years. The winds remind me of how Rolante once was." He paused, and cleared his throat. "She was a young child, so full of hope and life, until she began to wonder about things, about why humans do what they do. Anuella was much the same, her wanting, her caring driving her half-mad as the world disappointed her over and over. But she, too, had the touch of Mana, of truth, inside of her, and the fairies came to that like moths to a flame, as they did to Matilda. It was all Anuella's wisdoms could do to keep an eye on Matilda."

"Are you on Irwin's side, then?" Elazul demanded.

"Sides? Who said anything about sides, Jumi?" Selva said, sniffing. "Matilda has realized one never knows how complicated the puzzle may be. Perhaps Irwin had a part in the Goddess's return? How much do we determine ourselves, and how much of our paths does the Goddess make?"

"Sounds like nonsense to me," replied Daena. "All I know is that I am trying to save Matilda from the fate Irwin gave her."

"Why then, girl, all you have to do is keep going." Selva only flittered. "Can you take it?"

All looked to Ariesa to answer. _Was that a compliment, or a concern?_ She straightened with every ounce of pride. "Of course!"

"Then you face worse ahead. Matilda and I wish you luck." And Selva disappeared.

--

It had been hours Escad had been clambering over the sun-bleached skeleton, sheer anger being the driving force. Monsters had been attacking him on all sides, and he was worn out, tired, hungry, thirsty, but he would not let any of that touch him. He had a target, and that was the only thought in his head.

Finally, he made his way across a last bony ridge, nothing visible above. He could _feel_ his goal, how he could not say, perhaps simply some sort of resonance he might expect to have with a creature of the Underworld.

Irwin was facing away from him as he strode onto the enormous skull head.. Escad pulled his sword, but Irwin only turned nonchalantly. "Escad. How good to see you again."

Escad said nothing, not trusting himself to speak. It would only waste energy, and he needed every bit of it right then.

"Did you see the fairies on the way up?" Irwin continued conversationally. "They are mine, now."

"A little bit," Escad admitted grudgingly. "Evil things. I'm not surprised you're involved with them."

"Evil?" Irwin asked. "Who told you that?"

"Olbohn," Escad affirmed.

"I seriously doubt a Wisdom would say something like that," Irwin said with a hint of scorn.

"He became the king of the Underworld to remove Aion, the king of the fairies, from the place. That says it all."

"You probably should have listened closer. I see you are no less stupid than you were ten years ago. How did you like your time in the Underworld?" Irwin taunted. "You would think a demon would be the one to go there, but no, you let yourself fall there instead.. I would have hoped Olbohn would have taught you a few things. Then, at least you might be an interesting opponent."

"He taught me plenty." Escad's voice was flat. "The Underworld has its advantages."

"Oh?" Irwin said, amused. "And you still think you are the Holy Knight. We are not so unlike, you and I."

"I have nothing in common with you, demon," Escad sneered.

"Demon? Hardly. I am the heir to the throne of the fairies, and Matilda will be my queen. Probably not so surprising you dislike fairies, even though they have been Matilda's comfort her whole life. You know, you are just as power-hungry as I am, only I do not pretend otherwise."

Escad found Irwin had hit a nerve. _Was he really?_ His sword wavered somewhat, uncertainly, but he let himself harden once again. "Shut up!" Escad shouted. "You are nothing but a demon, confined by your demonic heritage."

"Perhaps." Irwin raised one clawed hand. "But you see, you, then, have free will. You chose to be this way, to hurt Daena, hurt Matilda. Perhaps," he said, grinning evilly, "perhaps that's why Matilda left you."

If Irwin had hit a nerve before, now he had struck to Escad's soul. _Had he done Matilda wrong, all this time? If he had made his choices differently, might he be with her now, she alive, and healthy?_ He tried to shake it off.

"Hurts to think about it, doesn't it?" Irwin cackled. "The fairies feel the pain of loss every day. Perhaps it is time for humans to feel some of the same." He extended one claw towards Escad. "I will take Matilda, and she will be leaving sorrow behind. Death is not so bad as you may think, though. You will be leaving your own miserable human life soon enough."

"No," Escad said, a moment of fear gripping him. And it was in that moment that Irwin roared, and struck.

A ring of energy erupted in all directions from Irwin, and the skeleton of Lucemia shook to the ground, as Escad struggled to keep his footing. As the quake ceased, he dove, sword already in mid-swing, but Irwin casually swiped one clawed finger towards him, and his monstrous hand seemed to inflated in size as the claw bit into his side with the sharpness of a sword.

Escad ignored the gashed wound, open and bleeding, and braced once again, only to find himself hurled to the ground once again as rays of power slammed into him. A sharp pain shot through his injured side, and he struggled to rise again… he couldn't allow the demon to win…

--

The sun _burned_ up here, in contrast to the clouded, cold skies of the base; this high up, its beams had no restraint. The three struggled under that sun, wobbling across yet another bone bridge.

"You sure you made the right decision coming with us?" Ariesa finally asked Elazul.

His look was impassive. "I am a Jumi Knight, Ariesa. We have faced all manner of things, and it has bred honor in us. If I make a promise, I keep it." And he turned as if nothing had happened.

Ariesa was glad for that. She worried she had touched a nerve, but was relieved that he held no regrets, for whatever reason. And somehow she kept her own faith better with him there. It kept her moving, one foot in front of the other.

Suddenly, a quake rattled the bone ground beneath them, tremors arriving in waves as they struggled to keep their footing, looking around in fear. Another moment, and it was gone as quickly as it came.

"We're nearing the top," Daena noted. "I think that was Irwin's way of saying hello."

Sure enough, Ariesa could see the end of the path, some ways above, and she motioned in what she hoped was an encouraging gesture to the others. The sight filled them with new energy as they clambered up the slope towards their goal.

"Something isn't right," growled Elazul.

It didn't take them long to figure out _what_, as they noticed the head of the Wyrm, wavering gently as if it were taking breaths in a way a skeleton could not. "Irwin's beginning to summon it back," Daena gasped in alarm.

That got them running, tearing up the last lap to meet at the top not only the demon, but another figure as well.

Escad was ever more tattered than he had been at the Tower of Winds. _Foolish man, thinking he's invincible, _pondered Ariesa. Still, he wielded his soulblade with defiance, only to receive a powerful clawed strike from Irwin that sent him flying with a gash that could easily be mortal. They could see blood dripping from his side in wounds he had already incurred in the battle, and it was a miracle he was even still standing.

Daena ran to him. "I've always done my best, but I guess this is it. You be a hero for me," he grunted.

"How did you get here before us?" Daena demanded.

"Having friends in the Underworld can help you get places," Escad laughed. "And I'm sure I'll be seeing them again soon enough."

"Well, you just do that, if you want to give up so easily," she replied crossly.

"Fool!" Elazul muttered.

The first spark of life they had seen reappeared, in the form of anger. "Fool?" the dying man muttered angrily. "I won't take that from a Jumi." Shakily, he got to his feet.

"Great. Now I can destroy you, Escad," their nearly-forgotten opponent asserted.

"Irwin," Daena shouted. "I will kill you for what you did to Matilda!"

"No matter," the demon gargled. "You, and the rest of humanity, will be gone soon enough." Ariesa felt strangely indifferent, her hand merely reaching down to her familiar sword. Her anger, her fear trickled out of her head and into her body once again.

Daena's voice was flat, expressionless. "Enough talk. Let's finish this."

Irwin tensed suddenly, turning to look first at Ariesa, then at Elazul. "You, girl, and you, Jumi. Who are these you have brought to me, Daena?" he demanded. "The fairies have told me of these. I will consider them a gift."

Ariesa looked to Elazul, confused, but he didn't seem to particularly care. She regained her concentration and slipped into a position of readiness.

Irwin snarled, suddenly surrounded by a multitude of opponents, and he began to _stretch_, to expand, not unlike the spriggans had done, but growing ever larger, his bond contorting and twisting until an enormous, clearly otherworldly figure towered over them. Fires seemed to burn in an aura around him, and Ariesa instinctively backed up a step, but her mind was already lost in the battle.

He slammed both huge hands into the shell of the Wyrm, and even as the ground shook, boulders rained towards them from the sky, leaving them instinctively running for cover, though none was to be found. Elazul avoided them deftly, and it was he who first cleaved his sword into the soft underbelly of the demon.

The roar was not of anger, but pain, and Irwin reacted like any other injured animal, turning on the one that had hurt him so.

Escad was nearly there, even injured as he was, but Ariesa was quicker, and sliced neatly through the demon's tail from behind as his attention was focused on Elazul. A deft turn of the sword sliced away a chunk of flesh, but at a shout of "Move!" she stepped out of the way to let Escad finish the job, his heavy sword cleaving through bone with a sickening crack to leave the tail hanging by a bare sliver of flesh.

Irwin's retaliation was quick, as not boulders, but fiery projectiles seemed to fall all around them, and Ariesa dropped to cover herself. Before she could stand up again, a giant paw of a hand sent her reeling and stumbling to the side.

Daena, with her unmistakable feline agility, leaped onto Irwin's outstretched back, to land a solid blow of her flail against Irwin's head. Even as the sound of platinum striking bone rang out, it left no injury, but Irwin shook his head in confusion from the force. Daena clung for long enough to cleanly hit his skull again, and leapt off as Irwin's neck dropped near the ground, trying to shake some clarity back into his expression.

Elazul saw the opening, and as Irwin's neck stretched, his sword drove into a soft spot in the red scales below the hardened skull, the angle up and away from him to penetrate straight into Irwin's brain.

Any mortal creature would not have had time to scream, but Irwin's otherworldly heritage gave him a bit of consciousness still. "Do you think humans can defeat evil? Do you think defeating me is enough?" Irwin roared with now-gasping breaths. "Poor, misguided creatures. It was my ancestor Aion who let himself become part human, and that side is the evil one. Just look at that man," he said, pointing to Escad.

Irwin crashed to the ground, and it shook around them once again, but it did not die off, rather growing in strength. The party looked around in confusion, but Daena was the first to catch on. "It's the Wyrm!" she cried. "The skeleton is falling apart, without Irwin to hold it together!"

The bones rattled around them, rumbling turning into roar, making Ariesa painfully aware of just how big the skeleton was. All struggled to hold their balance, but Elazul stood nearest the edge… and Ariesa saw the bone under him begin to crack before splintering into pieces with a sickening sound.

Elazul stumbled forward, catching himself before sliding slightly, one leg hanging off the spine of Lucemia. Ariesa had no time to think, and dove for the edge.

She wedged her hand inside a somewhat-secure handhold on a thicker bone, and desperately reached for him. "Elazul! Hang on!" she cried, but in his eyes she saw the first real terror she had even seen in the arrogant young Jumi. To her horror, the bone on which his crystal hand, the stronger one, gripped broke, and Elazul was suddenly hanging off swinging in space.

Pain and worry replaced fear. "Ariesa... take care of Pearl for me..." he murmured almost dreamily.

"No such luck," she replied. Spying a foothold, a deeper indentation in one of the larger bones, she hooked her foot tightly in the spot, then let herself hang from one arm and leg. Elazul was only a couple of feet below her.

"Elazul! Grab onto me!" she cried. With a tremendous exertion of effort, he swung slightly and pulled himself upwards with the one clinging hand, reaching up to clamp her shoulder with his stone hand with a surprising amount of force. She forced herself not to wince as he pulled himself up; bruises could be healed later.

One forceful push of that stone hand, and he was able to thrust himself forward back onto the rattling backbone of Lucemia. Ariesa was now herself hanging precariously off the rattling corpse, but a hand quickly reached under the arm still clinging desperately. In a moment of faith, she let go, and was briefly tugged up, slowly, before another pair of hands grabbed her around the torso and pulled her upwards.

She landed with a thud on top of Escad, realizing that as Elazul had struggled to pull her up, Escad had lent his own strength at the last moment to save her.

Daena ran around, panicked, as bits of bone began to splinter off around them, first protrusions, then patches. "Goddess! Selva! Anyone!" Daena prayed. "Please bring us back the Cancun Bird!"

_Someone_ was listening, as the giant rainbow bird swept down from the sky to pick up the battered humans. As it flew away, the skeleton of the ancient Wyrm finally collapsed into a heap of bones and dust, this time destroyed for good.

--

Matilda stirred, in semi-consciousness, until suddenly, in her sleep, she screamed, a poignant scream of utter loss. She convulsed once, and collapsed back down again.

The torches flared, suddenly shooting up almost to the ceiling as if in echo of Matilda's cry, then peacefully shrank down once again.

The nun that had been watching the abbess jumped from her seat and ran to her, putting one hand to her head. Perturbed, she grabbed Matilda's wrist, and held it for several long seconds, then, suddenly fearful, put her hand to Matilda's chest.

"_Nooo_!" she wailed to the rafters above, and in seconds a dozen nuns had poured into the dreamweaving room from the various parts of the temple. "What is it?" one asked.

"Matilda… she's…" The first nun could not bring herself to finish the sentence, but the one she was speaking with suddenly gasped, and pointed. All turned…

As they watched, the body of the priestess splintered into a hundred glittering motes, then rose in a thin stream to the stained glass above, and disappeared…

--

Daena looked out from the edge of the Cancun Bird's nest down to Lake Kilma below. Behind her, someone was dry-heaving. She chose not to embarrass them by turning around.

"What will I tell Matilda about Irwin?" she asked the sky. This time, no Wisdom, no Goddess, had an answer for her. She clambered down to the cliff edge below, hearing the others following, but too lost in her thoughts to notice.

"Madam!" Her reverie was shorted by a nun who came running up the path. "We saw the bird land... we are all so grateful you have returned..."

"I must see Matilda immediately," Daena replied gravely. But the nun's face gave away the truth even before she fell to her knees, making the sign of the tree on her chest in blessing.

"Madam... the abbess... she passed away, not long before you arrived..."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Escad's flinch, but she avoided his eyes for the moment. Duty came first. "The body has been attended to?"

The nun cringed slightly, obviously reluctant to be the one to report. "It has... disappeared, Madam. We saw a sparkling mist rise above the Temple of Healing... perhaps it was her spirit..."

_Matilda was gone_. Daena felt herself thud to the ground as it all sunk in. _Was it because they had killed Irwin? Would she be alive if they had not? Had they even had a choice?_

"Madam..." The nun's voice brought her back to her responsibilities. "How shall we announce this matter? Rumors are spreading already."

"I'm sorry... I need to think about this." And so much more.

_Matilda... _Daena thought, putting her head forward towards her lap, numbly feeling Ariesa's arm wrap around her shoulders_. She departed to fulfill her new destiny... I can't say it in any other way, but neither can I stop being sorry._

--

Pearl might have missed Elazul more, had the twins not been so entertaining. They had childlike wonder combined with adult intelligence, and she found her days filled with amusement.

All she knew was that Ariesa and Daena were doing something involving fairies at the moment; Bud and Lisa didn't know much more than that. Elazul had said he was going to Geo, but she wouldn't be surprised if he had joined Ariesa somewhere along the line. But a dinner-table conversation had made the three decide that they should try looking for fairies themselves, and here they were, not far from the lake itself, doing just that. With limited success.

"Hey! Look!" Bud cried. "Dammit! It disappeared again!"

"Don't curse, Bud, you've been picking up bad habits from Elazul. Pearl, how do you put up with him?"

Pearl giggled slightly. She wasn't sure if they were babysitting her, or the other way around. Trying to keep track of the youngsters made her think of how it must be like for Elazul to worry over _her_. "He's not so bad, really. He just acts silly sometimes."

"We're never going to talk to a fairy," Lisa moaned. "This was a dumb idea."

Pearl was not so sure. There was something in her core that had been whispering since they had been travelling along the lakeshore. It drew her now, not the same way as usual, but she had to follow nevertheless.

"Please... just be quiet a moment... " To her surprise, the twins actually listened to her.

She crept forward, delicately stepping through foliage, to find a group of slightly agitated fairies. They turned towards her but obviously she was no threat.

"Hello," she greeted them politely.

"You can see us?" twittered one.

"She's _Jumi_," another told the first, as if that explained all.

"But the other one couldn't... at the north shore last week..."

"Elazul?" Pearl exclaimed. "My knight? You saw him?"

"Greenish hair, plenty of attitude?" the second fairy asked.

Pearl couldn't help but giggle again. That was her Elazul, for sure.

"Your knight," the fairy mused. "There's something about him, that he couldn't see us… like his core didn't resonate to its full potential. It was strange, it pulled us, as yours did, but we didn't know the signature, so we were afraid to go closer… and he couldn't see us unless we showed ourselves."

"Well, Jumi guardian, we welcome you," the lead fairy told her, motioning Pearl into the circle. Pearl joined them calmly. "What has happened?" she inquired with concern.

"Lord Irwin's presence has vanished." Irwin... Pearl tried to remember. She thought she had heard Elazul and Ariesa mention the name... but... she had been thinking of something else... "Did he die?" Pearl wondered.

"He was supposed to be the one who would annihilate the humans. Pardon, no offense meant, Jumi, if you have human friends."

"None taken," Pearl replied, choosing not to correct them. Jumi _were _human, but she suspected the fairies understood the difference no more than the humans understood the fairies.

"Maybe we are the ones going extinct. The memories of war made us forget who we really are. We are lost without the Goddess."

The others erupted. "Traitor! Take that back!" came the shouts.

Pearl waited for them to quiet down before speaking. "Maybe none of us know who we really are... I don't know who I am..." She couldn't help but emphasize with their sense of loss.

One flittered over to alight in front of her, just at the level of her core, which now pulsed slightly in response. "You _don't_? This," she said, gesturing to the smooth white jewel resting below Pearl's collarbone, "absolutely screams of memories of history, of knowledge. You don't know what's inside?"

"Very little," Pearl admitted. "It's like there's something... it's almost there..." She sniffled slightly, but of course, even now, the tears would not come. Never tears.

The fairy looked at her with compassion. "The looking-glass tower."

"Huh?"

"The Tower of Leires…" From out of nowhere, a small item appeared, a round, polished circle of glass, framed in elaborate bronze patterns of ravens, stars and moons. "The glass itself is made of Altena Alloy, and it has Mana inside it. Take this mirror, and reflect the moon's light and go to where it will lead you. At the end, you will find the room of fate, and see your true face."

Fate... if only she knew hers. She looked in the mirror, in daylight nothing but an ordinary mirror, reflecting a pale, pretty young face with distant eyes. _That is Pearl, _she thought_. That is me._

"Pearl!" came Bud's cry.

"Oh no! What if we lost her?" wailed Lisa. "What will we tell Ariesa and Elazul?"

Pearl looked at the fairies. "We have to go," the one said.

"And so do I," she replied, as the fairy twirled in salutation, and then all were gone, just moments before Bud and Lisa came crashing through the bushes.

"Pearl!" Lisa cried, throwing her arms around the white-clad young woman. Pearl grasped her back warmly. Pearl was hardly tall, but next to this elf girl who barely reached her shoulder...

"We were worr - I mean, _Lisa _was worried," Bud announced, striding into the clearing.

"It's okay," Pearl told them. "We'll go home." _For now_, she thought, but already she knew, tonight she would be leaving.

--

Matilda's eyes opened, and for the first time in years, she could see clearly.

That is, unless she had lost her mind completely. A flicker of panic crept up as she looked around at rocky walls, not the walls of the temple of healing, no light streaming through the windows above, but stone pulsating softly red in the small, strangely homey cavern with bed and shelves.

Then her eyes caught the figure just to her left, and she remembered those last moments when she had felt Irwin leave the world, and decided she was ready to go as well.

"Wisdom of Darkness, Olbohn," she greeted the Lord of the Underworld. "So it's true. I am dead."

"So it would be," Olbohn murmured gravely. "It is not so bad. I have been waiting for you to show, for now you can make the choice. Will you pass on to the beyond, or live once again as the Seventh Wisdom?"

Matilda took a breath – metaphorically speaking, of course. She had once told Irwin she wanted to go to the Underworld, but now that she was here, it felt oddly anticlimactic. The curtain had fallen on the role she had been handed, and now she could take on a new direction, if she wished. She had a choice.

_She had a choice_. She repeated that to herself, silently, wondering if she had ever truly been able to say those words before.

Wispy spirits that could only be the Shadoles of myth flittered around Olbohn. "No! Stay here! Become one of us!" they squealed, one on top of the other, making a strange echo of piercing voices. Olbohn looked up in irritation, and with a snap of his fingers they were gone.

She knew. Life was gone, and this remained. She had made her choice the moment she felt Irwin's death throes in her heart. "It will be my pleasure to join the Wisdoms," she replied.

A soft warmth filled her, not the warmth of life, but the warmth of eternity. _Of Mana_. And she began to understand, like a secret wrapped by time. She had always thought that Mana was from somewhere else – from magic, from the fairies – but it had always been there. Mana was life itself.

Olbohn chuckled slightly. "You don't need to look so ancient anymore. Do you really want to meet Irwin looking like death? So to speak."

_Irwin_. "Did he come here too?" she asked, a bit nervously.

"He is down on the lower levels. Need some help fixing yourself?"

"No, I can do that... and much more," Matilda said, realizing the truth of the statement, as her imagination tore the years from her, back to the girl she had been at the start. She let her heart open, and she knew where she would go next.

Outside, she followed her feelings through the passages, but delirious happiness soon gave way to confusion as curving passage after passage led her first closer, than away. Finally, she saw a gray-furred beast-man, encased in armor as red as fire, coming towards her.

He stopped abruptly. "Who are you?" he asked.

She pulled herself up straight to look him in the eye. "I am the universe," she replied. "I am the Wisdom of Light."

"And I am Larc," he replied simply to her grandiose introduction. "Drakonis said something about this. Perhaps I can help you find your way around?"

"I seek Irwin," she told Larc gravely.

"Him. Okay. Bottom of the Underworld, follow me." He turned, and she picked up her pace to catch up. "From Gato, are you not?"

"Yes," she replied, surprised he knew.

"Did a guy named Escad make it back okay?"

"How do you know him?" asked Matilda, confused.

Larc shrugged. "He was around here for some time. You get to know people when you have all eternity to do so." Abruptly Larc stopped. "Right through here. I will leave you now."

She stepped into the cavern, barely noticing the faces that shrieked silently out of red rock as once again she saw _him. _Irwin stood with arms crossed, as the Shadoles clustered around him. "Try, Shadoles," he growled. "You will not take me."

"Another one!" one of the spirits cried gleefully at Matilda's entry. "Let's take the girl too!"

"Get away from him, Shadoles." Matilda said quietly.

"Who are you to tell us what to do? You're dead!"

"No, not dead... I am born again." From within, she felt a Spell of Truth surge, something more than fairies or elemental magic, something close to the core of life itself. It made the powers she had lost before seem like nothing more than party tricks. "Away, Shadoles." She swished a hand through the air, and the spirits dissipated like so much mist, leaving nothing but a few steps between her and Irwin. He only stared.

She went no closer to him. "How does it feel to be dead?" she asked him.

"I expected to die," he told her gruffly. "No one really tries to destroy the world and live. I am more surprised by your powers."

"It is the power of the universe," she told him, and she knew, it was. The power of the universe, the power of the Goddess, the power of Mana and life itself - and what had changed for her to be filled by it this way? "Our souls can create anything we desire."

"Like a god?" he replied. "I am no god. No matter what is said of Aion, he was a demon, as am I. I do not create, I destroy. The demons of the underworld wanted nothing more than to reduce the world to the smithereens there were before the Goddess took over, and the fairies that replaced them are the same whether they know it or not."

"But that is not correct," Matilda said, surety filling her for the first time in her life. "You created _me_." With a start, she realized it was the truth. "Everything that has happened, everything that had begun ten years ago, has led me up to this, her destiny. You saw that I couldn't be molded into what the world asked of me, but by meeting you, I was able to begin creating the person I really should be. And that person is here now, waiting for the unfair world you wished to destroy to come to an end, and become once again what the Goddess wanted."

"Perhaps so, but I am nothing of the Goddess. The whole time, your presence was a thorn in my heart. I would bring chaos to the world once again, but to do it... I need to be free of the spell of love, the spell of Matilda. We can never be as one."

Matilda's heart sank. "Don't! We are here together because it was what we both wanted…"

Irwin clenched his fist and flexed his arm. "Perhaps for a moment. But now, I am ready to let go, and move on to the beyond."

She took a step towards him, but as she reached for him, he faded away and she touched nothingness.

"Matilda... I loved you..." His words hung in the air, even as he disappeared, forever.

She fell to the ground, suddenly feeling tremendously weak. All her preaching about how things were part of the Goddess's master plan, but now that she was faced with it so directly, she had trouble accepting the fact. She had given Ariesa a path, but had no way of knowing yet if that path would make the girl any happier than she herself. But she had done what she had said she wanted; she had allowed Irwin to be free.

She didn't regret her decisions, but she suffered for them nonetheless.

It had been so strange that Larc had brought up Escad. She did not fail to notice the irony, that he was back in reality, and here she was in the Underworld. She wondered if perhaps she had not done right by him after all.

Selva had said she had something of Anuella in her. _Was this what Anuella had endured?_ Selva had said she would help bring about a new era, but Anuella had hoped beyond hope to bring something more to the world, and ended, mad and alone. _Was that what she was doomed for as well?_

When Selva came to bring her into the world of the Wisdoms, all he found was a young girl crying on the ground with no one but the silent faces to accompany her.


	21. Secrets: Moons

**Author's Note:** Nothing much to say, just wanted to offer a general thank you to my reviewers. Especially for those of you I have chatted with privately (you know who you are), who have nicely helped to fill my review queue. (Free advertising!)

I'll finish the thing even if NOBODY reviews, but it's kind of a big perk to my day. Especially since Meerf is having a bit of a hard time in life right now, thanks in part to the fabulous state of the U.S. economy. Ugh.

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**21. Secrets: Moons**

_Was it all just in one's imagination now,_ Leires wondered? _Was it all just a memory, the Goddess, the elementals?_

She hated what had happened to the moon spirit most of all. The world had mostly ceased calling her Luna, the moon to Dryad's sun, the emptiness beyond that balanced the life within the world. No, now they called her Aura, and she was considered the spirit of gold, of money, of progress.

What did it say of the world, when progress was considered the opposite of life?

It had a lot to do with Forcena, she knew, its inexorable march towards power and empire eclipsing everything that she held dear. Her own country - well, the one she had married into - Ferolia, commonly called the Beast Kingdom, had never officially been conquered, but she knew it was as good as another Forcenan province by now. The same had happened when the free cities of Maia and Byzel had been absorbed, and Granz, all valuable for what they could contribute to the empire - resources, metal, and riches. Kevin's dreams of pacifism had died, and it made her sad, though she had never known the man.

If only the spirits were available, as they once had been, and the people had been able to connect with them and Mana they once had. Now they referred to them as objects; she cringed every time she heard someone talking about "the" Undine, "the" Jinn, forgetting the forces the elemental spirits once had been. But that was pointless, she knew; might as well wish for Mana to appear from rocks, which it wouldn't, Jumi excluded.

_What were the spirits doing now?_ she wondered idly, though she knew the answer. _Waiting_.

She hoped that what she was doing here, would be still be there waiting for them when they chose to return. She looked towards the moons, all six above her, at the top of the tower that now bore her name.

The six moons had not always been there; the Beast Kingdom had three above its forest before, and only the one over the rest of the world, but now six alternated shining on the world. It was said those were the spirits' way of keeping the light out for the next Goddess. But it spawned all sorts of crazy rumors and myths about moon gods and Flammies and things even beyond, to fill in the blanks after the horrors seen in war had replaced history in people's minds. She had lived long enough to remember the old stories, a hundred and twenty-six years now; but she was lucky that way.

Or not, as she might also see it. She outlived her children, generation after generation; and the pain of each loss of someone younger made it obvious to her why Jumi rarely had children. Her great-grandchild was now on the throne, a boy so distant she barely knew him; she was the queen mother, but that was all.

It had not been for any title that she had accepted her marriage, no matter what Shayla thought - or any of her other relatives, for that matter. Nor for love, though that came with time. Nor to encourage the mixing of the elf and beastman races; that was now so commonplace that much of the population had the blood of both.

No, she came here to create things that Wendel couldn't stomach, things that were needed nevertheless. Here in the Moonlight Forest, there was comprehension of some of the powers the world had forgotten. The world mourned the Tree that meant the Goddess to them, but not the Moon that kept it in balance. They no longer understood.

She leaned over the mirror she had been working on all night, and many nights previous, watching as it soaked up the moonlight. She had ordered a roof built over the open top story of the tower, with a skylight that let only some of that light in; but it focused and concentrated it, in exactly the right place. The patch of moonlight was several yards in diameter, and slowly but surely, the light sunk into the floor, merging with what she had placed there, just as she had intended.

The bronze setting had been delicately carved from Mintos bronze, not by tools, but by minute shapings of Mana itself. The reflective surface was covered with a slender film of a rare alloy from Altena, a mineral mixture that held all the power that country had once had. It had only been a small amount that she had been able to obtain, but with its power, it was more than enough, as she had spread it across the surface to an infinitesimal thickness. It looked, not so much like a mirror, truly, but like water – not surprising, as it came from the land of ice.

The moons were what gave it the power of reflection, the power to strip away facades, and reveal the truth. The smaller mirrors she had made – they were the keys that would allow one to find their way here to the door of fate, and the mirror that showed the truth - to those who could stand it. Those keys would find their way to those who needed them; the power of Mana itself would set their path.

She felt a bit of kinship with Anuella, to what she was trying to do up in the snowfields, creating things to aid in the fairie wars that wracked the world - finding the Mana she needed was like pulling teeth. The tower itself… mages were making towers like this all over the land, towers where elemental power was focused to increase their supply of Mana, and just as quickly the fairies and the dragons took them down.

But this… it was not for any side, exactly, and its own power and that of the forest itself, would protect it from those she did not want to see it. The forest was like that, the Mana seeped in so deep that it had its own power now; several of the places a shattered Mana Stone had formerly resided had the same.

With the power of the ancient moon stone soaked into its walls, the Mana of the tower was strongest at night; it would hide during the day, even from her. It had… its own intelligence. She had made it that way.

And now, at long last, it was done. Murmuring the request for blessings from the spirits, she poured over it a vial of holy water she had returned to Wendel to get. The pure water sparkled, reflecting the six moons in brilliant colors, then slowly sinking into her creation to wash away any imperfections. To her ears, she could hear almost a soft note, as the surface dulled, and the carvings around it resonated.

It was part of the tower, now.

She sat back on her chair, an old, disused throne from the time she had been fully queen, and contemplated her handiwork. She looked across the room, the moonlight lending a gentle, calming glow, her eyes sweeping over the mirror to the heavy doors that now stood ajar, until she left tonight and closed them for good.

The doors were her work as well. They would only open to those they recognized, whose need they recognized, or to those who knew the person inside.

She wondered if Shayla realized it would recognize _her_.

Not just that moon core of Shayla's, but it was something Leires had woven into it especially for her aunt. She couldn't bring herself to agree with her, or any of the Jumi, and her aunt certainly didn't understand her trying to work magic up here, understand that she had her own eye towards the future. Her father kept her cursory records in Gato; the rest, was intertwined with the path of Mana itself, for those who would seek it.

She hoped Shayla - Blackpearl - would one day find herself drawn to the tower, and see what she needed to see, remember who she was and where she came from. Leires would not be around by then, but Blackpearl would most likely be there to see the dawning of the new era, and Leires' best hope to contribute something to the future was through her.

The spirits had plenty of time to wait.


	22. Legends: Mirrors

**22: Legends: Mirrors**

It had been three days they had stayed in Gato, enough time to stay for Matilda's memorial service, a melancholy affair made slightly creepy by the mysterious lack of a body. As the service dragged on, Daena twitched slightly.

"What is it?" Ariesa inquired quietly, wearing a borrowed white Gato robe, not those of the nuns but a simpler cut reserved for funerals and other solemn rituals. On her other side, Elazul said not a word, tugging absentmindedly at the same robe that looked horribly wrong on him.

_Maybe he was just upset that they wouldn't let him bring his sword with him_, she thought, and wondered then how firmly the impulse to protect, to fight was part of him now, especially after all the years he claimed to have been alive.

"I thought..." Daena swallowed. "I thought I felt Matilda's presence here with us now. Only, not her presence before she... passed... but the presence she had when she was young, strong-willed, vibrant... oh, I don't know how to describe it."

Ariesa only reached down to offer her hand, and Daena squeezed it tightly until it was her turn to go up and read the eulogy, leaving her with Elazul.

Ariesa snuck a look at the man next to her; he had some of that solemn stone-faced look he often covered his expression with, but it was just a little different this time. Idly, she wondered what Elazul looked like _underneath_ that robe, then started. Where had _that_ thought come from? He was attractive, certainly, but she wasn't exactly prepared to go there…

Mentally scolding herself for impropriety, she forced herself to return her attention to the service. Daena was barely restraining back her tears, but still retaining a mournful dignity appropriate to her position. She considered offering her hand to Elazul, but changed her mind as his hands balled into fists, the knuckles of the fleshy hand turning white from the pressure.

_Damn, _she thought_. Maybe Jumi can't cry, but he sure looks like he wishes he could. Or hit something, failing that._

Yet despite the sadness, there was something… _invigorating_… to it all. Perhaps it was the knowledge of experiences, of things changing around her? It made her feel awakened in a way she could not remember feeling before. Her experiences were changing her, she knew. Choice. She understood now. That was what Matilda wanted to give her.

Daena's speech completed the ceremony, and the two of them stood quietly back to allow the residents of Gato the first chance to speak with the closest friend of their deceased spiritual leader. They saw Escad come up from where he had been standing far from them during the ceremony, and whisper a few quick words to her; Daena first shook her head, then nodded reluctantly, and Escad left with no further conversation.

Ariesa and Elazul finally got bored and wandered off, seating themselves on the rocky outcroppings of the cliffside terrace overlooking the valley. They exchanged casual conversation as if they were complete strangers, finally giving up completely rather than waste the effort. Ariesa leaned the other way to gaze out over the valley at the thin fog covering the desert from the morning, just starting to burn off. "It's amazing," she breathed. "It's like you can see forever."

Elazul did not respond, but did turn, leaning over her lap to peer ever so slightly over the rocky edge. "A beautiful place to hold a funeral," he replied. "And a horrible place for Rubens to die."

There it was. She had almost forgotten, those events so overtaken by Matilda, by Sandra, that at this point it Rubens and his fate were not the association she had with this place. But obviously for Elazul, the death of the other Jumi was primary, right there in the forefront of his mind.

He felt rather… near… to her, and she briefly contemplated putting an arm around him. Anyone else, she would have, but she just wasn't sure how he would take it. He took the choice from her when he leaned back abruptly, breaking the moment, and Ariesa waited for awkward silence to settle again.

Fortunately, Daena saved them, finally breaking away from yet another gaggle of Gato followers and believers and looking a little frazzled as she plopped herself down with them. "This is not making me feel better," she bemoaned.

"What did Escad say?" Ariesa asked quickly. Anything to lighten up the dueling dark moods on either side of her.

"He said... he said he wanted to go talk to some people, but he was really vague about who or why," she replied. "I tried to convince him to stay, but I learned long ago, that arguing with him is pretty much a pointless endeavor." Elazul harrumphed at that.

"Besides... I think I may need to leave for a while myself. By tradition, the temple is closed to all for eighty-eight days after the death of an abbess, and only then is another chosen. So you see... there's nothing for me really to do around here, and I don't want to spend my time just wandering around the town, and I was thinking maybe I might come visit you in Domina for a while?" The last came out in a pleading rush.

Elazul tugged her sleeve lightly. "We... at least I... still have to go to Geo."

"I haven't forgotten," she replied, "but Daena... you're welcome to come stay at my house. There's a couple of kids living there right now, but they're not too much trouble."

"And Pearl," Elazul added, sudden worry creasing his features.

"And Pearl," Ariesa repeated. "So either way, you won't be alone." Daena nodded, looking grateful.

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"Ariesa. Ar-ies-a," a low, chiming voice intoned.

She opened her eyes groggily, to see Daena leaning over her, one hand on her shoulder to gently shake her awake.

"Today's the day we leave," Daena announced, in a tone that said clearly she couldn't wait to put some distance between herself and Gato. "We're just getting things packed up."

"Elazul awake?" Ariesa mumbled.

"Elazul? He's been up for hours already, getting everything organized. Does he even sleep?"

"I wouldn't know," Ariesa replied, sleepily fingercombing her hair and reaching for her sticks to fix it with. "I've never slept with him."

Daena only looked at her in shock, then abruptly started laughing. It took Ariesa a minute to comprehend. "Wait a minute... I didn't mean..." she murmured sheepishly, then finally gave up as Daena's laughter infected her, triggering giggles of her own.

It helped lighten the mood, leaving the two chatty as they reached the outskirts of Gato where Elazul was impatiently waiting. "Took you long enough," he grumbled, but they just ignored him, and soon enough he - well, didn't so much cheer up, but lost the bulk of his bad mood.

Daena guided them down a steep path from the mountains. "It's not the easiest way to go," she explained, "but it's a lot quicker than backtracking towards the highway. Gato was created to not be easily accessible." They picked their way down the hills, but sure enough, the path soon opened up to what Ariesa recognized as the southeast shore of Lake Kilma, not far from Wendel itself. And relatively close to home, as well.

She needed some supplies and a little break, and Elazul was showing the worry of being away from Pearl for so long. "It's not that I don't know she's safe, I could tell that in my core in an instant," he confided in her as they traversed the fertile lake region. "But if that were to change, I couldn't do anything about it, and it's frustrating, even though I know there's places I can't take her."

"So, a stop at home, and Geo, then?" Ariesa asked.

"Geo. As agreed."

It was barely mid-afternoon when they skirted Domina and found her familiar cottage emerging into view. "Home," she sighed dreamily. Daena remained silent as they wandered up the path, the sproutling chittering at the new people coming up. It wobbled over to greet them. "I like butterflies!" it announced, with perfect seriousness.

Daena sighed. "We have these things all over Gato as well. They never make any sense, and I wonder what twisted mind created them."

"I've learned to ignore it," Ariesa replied, reaching for the doorknob. Twisting it, she opened the door, and...

There was something wrong.

"Hi, Master! How are you doing?" Lisa piped up with strained perkiness.

"Master, we made you some tea!" Bud called from the kitchen.

They hadn't been this polite since she first met them. Elazul strode in behind them, and was on them in a moment. "Where is Pearl?!" he demanded.

"Nothing bad happened..." Bud began.

"We were here last night..." Lisa continued.

"This morning she was gone..."

"She left a note..."

Elazul practically tore the note out of Lisa's proffered hand. "_It's calling me.. I have to go..._ What is this?!" he demanded angrily. "This doesn't tell me where she is!"

"We're sorry!" Lisa cried.

The twins had huddled in the alcove to the side of the kitchen, and suddenly Elazul looked absolutely abashed. Ariesa only looked at him with a faintly disapproving expression that she knew was mirrored on Daena next to her.

Elazul wilted. "You don't have to _both _do that to me," he muttered in their general direction. He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. It's not your fault," he addressed the twins. Lisa released the death grip she had on her brother, and Bud tried to pretend like he hadn't had the same hold on her.

With no further comments, Elazul wheeled to leave. "Wait! where are you going?" cried Ariesa.

Elazul turned for only a second. "I have to go. Ariesa, I..." She thought for a moment he was about to say something else. "I am grateful for the help, but Geo will have to wait." And a few strides put him back outside into the sunlight.

Ariesa was suddenly dejected. "Pearl..."

Daena touched her arm gently. "We can find her. I see you are concerned about a friend." She gave an ironic smile. "Believe me, I understand."

"Who is this?" Bud asked abruptly.

"Bud, manners!" chided his sister.

"Oh, I'm sorry... Daena, these are my apprentices, Bud and Lisa. Lisa's the one with the ponytail. Bud, Lisa, this is my friend Daena, who is coming to stay with us for a while."

"Except that now it looks like we have to leave again and go find your Jumi friend's guardian," Daena replied dryly.

"Pearl!" Bud cried out. "I'm worried about her!"

"Relax, Bud, you know I won't leave Pearl in trouble somewhere. But where first?" Ariesa wondered.

Lisa tugged her arm insistently. "There was this mirror..." With urging, she spilled out the story. "We were down at the lake, looking for fairies, just for fun, you know? Well, Pearl found this mirror somewhere, and she kept playing with it for the rest of the day, and even when Bud and I went to bed, she was still looking at it like there was something in it. And then today she was gone, you know?"

Daena listened raptly to the story. "That can only be the moon's mirror," she announced. "It leads one to the Tower of Leires."

"Which is where? And what is it?" Ariesa pressed.

"It's sort of... hidden," Daena replied. "It was a great source of Mana, built to increase to increase the supply of Mana to the mages, also enchanted so not just anyone could find it during the wars. When the moons shine, its powers increase, and in the moonlight the mirror catches a bit of the Mana of the Tower. Hence, the mirror as the key."

"So we can't find it," Ariesa said, feeling a momentary loss of hope before Daena continued.

"Fortunately, I can lead you to it. All the training in Gato does teach one a few things," she finished with a hint of satisfaction. The twins _oohed _at that one. "Whoever built the tower… left records of his or her work in Gato, and enough Temple training will help one find it. If we leave in the morning, we should get there right on time."

"Take us with you this time!" Bud pleaded. Lisa nodded assent.

Ariesa surveyed them. She wanted to keep them safe, but she could not do that forever, and she was starting to wonder how many places were truly safe anymore. "I suppose you two are ready."

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Elazul stood gazing up at the raven-decorated gate, sword in hand. He had kept the weapon handy for some miles now; the darkness in the surrounding forest practically screamed danger to his core. It was hard to sense Pearl at all through the distractions.

He was lucky; Pearl had only had half a day's head start. But tracking her through the forest had not been as easy as he would have hoped, the signature of her core fading in and out with all the other Mana in this crazy forest. Going was slower than he would have wished, and by the time he made it to the strange tower, night had fallen once again.

Yet there had been no sign of Pearl. She must have known exactly where she was going, somehow. And if something drew her that strongly... He worried what it might be, what it might mean.

_What was it that she was looking for?_ He had found her, a lone, helpless guardian in the desert, and he had protected her with his life ever since that day. _Wasn't that good enough? What if something bad happened to her?_ Sometimes, he wasn't sure if it was so much that she needed him, or that he needed her. Guiltily, he thought, _what if something _good_ happened, and she didn't need him anymore?_

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True to her word, Daena led them in a defined line westward until, late in the afternoon, they came to the edge of the forest. It was known as the Midnight Forest, for its thick branches that obscured most of the light even during the daytime. Legends said that once the forest had been permanently under cover of night, and three moons lit it up, beams cutting through the trees in a mysterious way that sun could not.

But of course, Ariesa knew those legends must be false. Sure, Lumina was permanently under night cover, but even there the six moons rotated properly.

Bud looked with trepidation at the thick forest. "I'd sure hate to travel through that at night," he muttered.

"Well, I have news for you, Bud. That's exactly when we're going to have to go through here. I've gotten us as close as I know on my own, but from here on out, it will be the Mana of the Tower itself that leads us to it, and that's strongest at night." The twins went wide-eyed at that, and Lisa gulped, but neither asked to turn around and go back home.

Ariesa, meanwhile, was wondering about different things. "Pearl - she would have traveled at night, would she be safe here? And Elazul, we haven't seen any sign of him, I can only hope he's following her core."

Daena smiled reassuringly. "I don't know that much about Jumi, but I wonder. The Tower itself would probably make sure she makes it there safely, but if the Tower had business with her, it might not want her knight there before it's done."

"You speak as if it's a living person," Ariesa replied uncomfortably.

"Not exactly," Daena replied, "but it is said that strange spells are woven into it so it would be able to protect itself during the wars."

"Then how do we know it will let us get to it?" Ariesa challenged.

"We don't," Daena replied matter-of-factly. "But it has no reason to assume that we have anything to do with Pearl, so we'll just have to hope. We'll know when we get there." She looked at her companions appraisingly. "I would suggest everyone take a nap, if we're to travel tonight."

----------------------------------------

The forest, at least, seemed to cooperate and it was not a long walk before the trees abruptly gave way to a looming tower, lit with an eerie light that reflected purple in the night air. Greeting them, a silver gate carved with enormous ravens came into view, causing the twins to involuntarily pull towards each other as they walked.

And as they drew close, the moonlight caught a familiar figure in its path.

"Pearl!" Bud called.

The pale girl turned, half in a daze. In the cool moonlight she seemed... different.. somehow. _Older? Less innocent?_ It must be a trick of the light, Ariesa told herself.

"Leires..." Pearl murmured, her voice loaded with the sound of half-forgotten memory. "I want to go... I want to leave… I want to know, but it scares me…"

"You should have waited until Elazul could go with you," Daena scolded.

"I know... I worry him so much, he is so good to me," Pearl said, her eyes faraway. Suddenly, she shivered slightly in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature. "You don't know what it's like, I get caught up in my own thoughts, and they won't let me be…"

"I can't let you go in alone, Pearl. A guardian shouldn't be separated from her knight in a place like this," Ariesa interjected.

"Even I know that much about Jumi," Daena added.

"We'll go with you, Pearl!" Bud announced, practically jumping out of his skin.

"Thank you.... but I don't know if I can get my answers if we all go... it's always only two, with the Jumi." Pearl turned timidly, the strain of making a request leaving her unable to even look up from the ground. "Ariesa... I don't want to be a bother, but... will you go with me?"

"Of course, Pearl," Ariesa replied. "I would be honored to be your temporary knight."

Barely audibly, Daena murmured to her as the twins protested. "We'll be right behind you. You get a fifteen minute head start, and then we're going in." Ariesa nodded to show she had heard.

Pearl motioned her forward slightly, then took Ariesa's hand gently in her own, drawing it to her core. Ariesa nearly gasped as her fingertips made contact. It was like she could see… not everything about Pearl, certainly, but her essence, she might have said. There was peace, and warmth, but underneath it all a thin gurgling layer of confusion and fear. Somehow, at the same time, she knew Pearl found her own touch comforting, and that gave her courage.

Pearl dropped her hand, and the sensations disappeared. "What…" Ariesa asked, gulping, a little overwhelmed by it all. "What did you do?"

"A knight-guardian bond," Pearl announced proudly. "Well, a temporary one, since I already have a knight, but it should be enough for us to keep track of each other. It will last maybe a couple of hours, unless Elazul finds us sooner. It kind of tends to get blotted out by a stronger bond."

Sure enough, Ariesa _could_ feel Pearl – it was very faint, and she had to focus to really get it, but it was there. "A couple hours? I suppose we should get started then?" she asked. Pearl nodded, and turned to lead the way inside. Ariesa felt as if the ravens were watching her as she entered.

----------------------------------------

Daena's stories had infected her more than she realized, Ariesa realized as she entered the building, and her head was already crawling with odd sensations - real, or imagined, she could not say. She found herself latching onto that sense of Pearl just to keep herself calm and focused. The walls seemed to be breathing around her, and Ariesa squinted her eyes to see if they were really inhaling and exhaling. They didn't seem to be.

Pearl, in contrast, seemed completely at ease, or more accurately, no more nervous than she had been outside. She wandered to and fro along the corridor as Ariesa tried to get her bearings, with that charming-yet-mysterious air she always got when she was thinking very deeply about something, and not finding the answer.

Ariesa was feeling very un-knightly at the moment. It was one thing to fight your way through somewhere, but having someone relatively defenseless counting on you to get them through - it was another feeling altogether. _Is this what Elazul feels like all the time?,_ she wondered, and suddenly a lot of his tension and moodiness made sense.

_Elazul_. If he could do it, she would make him proud. She forced herself to stand up a bit straighter as he would; no point in letting her worry trickle down to her guardian-of-sorts. "Where to, Pearl?"

She looked around dreamily. "Up," she said, raising her head. "The top... where the moons shine..."

"Up is good," confirmed Ariesa. "So, first step, is to find a staircase, right? Maybe down this way?" Pearl did not respond; her expression was far away, and nothing on her face even acknowledged that she had heard.

_How would Elazul have handled this?_ Actually, she knew, and though before it made him seem liked a jerk, now it sort of made sense. She raised her voice somewhat. "Pearl, we're going this way!" she ordered, with forced confidence, taking a few steps in an arbitrarily chosen direction to the left.

"Oh... okay," Pearl replied, snapping back to attention. "Whatever you think is best." She strolled distractedly in Ariesa's general direction, quickening her pace a little whenever the distance between them became too great. Ariesa led, sword gripped in her hand as if expecting an attack, but the halls were deathly silent.

She regretted her mental choice of words, and forced herself to move on.

Her guess proved correct, as before her opened a grand staircase, and she exhaled a breath she didn't know she was holding as they began to climb. The lighter tread of Pearl's small feet tapped behind her as the stairway led outside, curving along the outside of the building. The back side, she thought; there was no sign of the gate of ravens below.

A second and third floor passed without incident. As they traveled once again along the outer staircases circumventing the building, Ariesa let her guard down enough to appreciate the view that was appearing, now that she could just begin to see over the tops of the trees. She felt an enormous sense of relief. Perhaps the tower wasn't out to get them after all.

Or perhaps it sensed her sudden comfort and retaliated.

She was striding down another crumbling hallway just ahead of Pearl, decorated with ancient suits of armor, and had even started humming slightly to herself, when two of those suits of armor jumped out at her.

"Pearl! Get back!" she cried, immediately shifting into fighter-mode. Time to figure out how good she was at this knight thing.

Her sword was out in a flash, just in time to block the swing from one of those animated suits. As she danced with them, her speed and skill quickly overcoming their awkward bulkiness, she realized that in the back of her head she was always conscious of Pearl, instinctively, where she was, where the enemies were in relation to her.

Her charge was one more variable, but nothing she couldn't handle, no worse than having one extra monster to deal with, and she'd done that before. Her worry dropped off, and she felt her responses become more natural as she lost herself in the fight.

----------------------------------------

"Alright, kiddos," Daena said. "You can stop your whining. We'll go in now."

Lisa was in the middle of patiently explaining what she believed was a very well thought out argument on why they needed to follow Pearl and Ariesa, Bud complaining and interrupting the entire time. She hadn't really expected Daena to suddenly change her mind.

"You planned this all along, didn't you?" Lisa accused. "You might have _told _us."

"You're really bossy, you know? Like our teachers at the Geo Magic Academy." Lisa was suddenly embarrassed _for _Bud, but Daena brushed it off with a laugh. "That's right, and until your Master gets back, you have to do everything I say. Or else..."

"Or else what?" Bud replied stubbornly.

"Or else..." Daena leaned to look Bud right in the face. "Or else I'll tell Pearl you have a crush on her!"

"Do not!" Bud cried. "Girls are icky!"

"I'm a girl!" Lisa protested.

"You're my sister, you're not _really_ a girl..."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"If you two would like to help me find Pearl..." Daena turned, and Lisa squeaked as she ran to catch up. Bud trailed behind just to be contrary, muttering the whole while.

----------------------------------------

One question was answered for her a few floors into the tower, when she spied Elazul, just about to turn a corner ahead of her. "Elazul!" she yelled, running after him in case he hadn't heard.

He spun around, though, at the sound of her voice. "_Daena_?" he called, surprised.

"You're late", she shouted accusingly.

"Late?" he called back. "I've been in here for _hours_. I swear, the damn tower is changing shape on me. What floor is this anyway?"

"The sixth."

A bat flew down only to be easily disposed of with a swipe of Elazul's sword. "And then these possessed creatures and bloodsucking bats, hounding me every step of the way. I swear they must be out to get me."

"Not inconceivable," Daena replied, earning a confused expression from Elazul.

As if on cue, a flurry of bats followed to avenge their fallen brother, but before Daena could even pull out her flail, a bolt of fire took out the center of the pack, and an odd circle of green exploded outward to finish the rest. She turned around to see the twins smiling smugly, Bud motioning with a small instrument.

From behind Elazul, suits of armor came crashing through, and Daena motioned the twins back. "Magic won't help against these," she told them, and they pulled back behind one of the less-animated stone statues. Daena nodded to Elazul, and they dove in together.

The poltergeists were quickly disposed of by the twin attacks of sword and flail, they disappearing as the suits of armor that had been their vehicles were bludgeoned into pieces. Once the monsters had been disposed of, Daena stopped to catch her breath, and the twins stepped out from their protected hiding place. "You okay?" asked Elazul, with real concern on his face.

She nodded. "Let's try to get to the top, if this tower will oblige."

----------------------------------------

"The room of fate lies beyond that door... " Pearl stood staring at the heavy, elaborately carved doors emblazoned with ravens and moons, uncertainty on her face and trickling through the rapidly-fading bond to Ariesa. "Everyone must face their past..."

She was scared. Ariesa was scared _for _her. "You don't have to, Pearl."

Pearl turned with bone-deep sadness on her face. "Yes, I do. But you don't... I shouldn't have let you come. I'm sorry... you can leave if you want…"

"Never," Ariesa affirmed. "I'll be right behind you all the way." And she was, as the doors opened seemingly of their own accord.

Moonlight shone in through the window in the roof, scattering across a floor with carvings even more elaborate than those on the doors. The walls of the room were tall, but at the top, a dome opened up to expose the room to the sky, and moonlight glinted sporadically on parts of the carvings. The carvings framed a circle glassy- smooth, not so much reflecting, but seeming rather to take in the moonlight.

They were not alone.

On the far half of the semicircle, a tall woman stood, wielding a spiked, vicious-looking hammer. Her hair was the same color as Pearl's, that silvery-pale moonlight blonde, but there the resemblance ended. She was much taller, and dressed in pale gray silks covered with a heavier, darker cape, and while she seemed at first to be looking at the carvings on the floor, she raised her head in Pearl's direction as they entered. Pearl stepped out onto that moon-mirrored surface.

Ariesa pulled back, somehow feeling extraneous. She plopped herself on a battered throne-like chair, pillows long since reduced to threads, though her sword was still tightly gripped in her hand, just in case, and her body poised on the brink of motion. It gave her a view of both women at once, Pearl on her right, and the stranger on the left. With a start, she realized that their reflections were not constant, changing, amorphous, vacillating between dark and light on both sides, and just as soon as a shape seemed to form, it would disappear before Ariesa could get a straight look at it.

The oddly-shifting balance made her think. Balance, she had read, was the key to Mana, in a hundred different ways, a thousand little dichotomies and nuances that made the world stable. She wondered what, in fact, she was really seeing before her.

Pearl flinched, but forced herself forward, raising her head up high. "Who are you?" There was no response. "Do you know something I don't? Can you tell me something I want to know?" Still no response, as Pearl descended to pleading. "Please… I can't bear it, not knowing my own past…"

The woman turned towards Pearl. A beam of moonlight narrowly missed reflecting on her face, and her thick hair hid the rest, but Pearl was close enough to see clearly and gasped in sudden surprise. "No... it can't be..."

The woman seemed just as shocked, and suddenly pushed Pearl away. As Pearl tumbled to the floor, she faded in an instant, never having spoken a word.

----------------------------------------

The tower apparently had decided to be reasonable, and despite a few more monster encounters, Daena, Elazul, and the twins found themselves moving upward at a comfortable pace, until the last staircase opened into a small vestibule sort of a room, completely dominated by a huge door decorated not unlike the gate outside. The eyes of the twin ravens on the doors seemed to move to follow them.

"The Door of Fate," Daena said in awe. "I read about it, but I assumed it was just a legend." Lisa stretched a hand out to touch the door, then suddenly shrank back.

Elazul was obviously disconcerted, confused, and it was making him inarticulate as well. "My core... it's clouded..." he said, sort of to Daena, sort of to the room beyond. "Not like she's in danger, exactly, but it means... I don't know, it just feels different, I've never felt anything like this before... I can't keep away from my guardian, but do I put her in more danger going after her? Is it better if I don't fight?" he said, motioning with his sword in the air. "What should I do?" he finished, almost pleadingly.

Daena did not have the answer for him, just held his eyes for a moment. "I'm going in," he finally decided.

With a determined gesture, he shoved his sword back in its sheath. He grasped the handles of the heavy doors in each hand, and with a grunt, threw them open.

----------------------------------------

Ariesa shrieked, and dove for the girl, crumpled on the floor. She had cut her lip, but that was of no moment. Ariesa knew where to look first, and put her hand to Pearl's core, the pure white gem below the collarbone. It hummed contentedly at her touch.

"Pearl?" she ventured.

The girl pulled herself to her knees, wiping off her face with back of the hand and looking at the warm moisture that crossed it, surprised to see the blood there. _I should be the one bleeding_, thought Ariesa in panic.

"My core is fine... But Ariesa... I was so scared..."

_Good, she's undamaged, _Ariesa told herself._ But some knight I make._

She was about to ask what Pearl had seen, when her core suddenly seemed to spark, with a potency even she could feel through her own slender fingers that still made contact. Only one thing would do that...

"Elazul," she greeted him without looking.

He ignored her, running to his guardian. "Pearl..."

His look was all concern, as he wrapped his arms around her gently, and she settled against his chest, her cheek pressed to his core. "It's okay, you're here, my knight," she murmured dreamily. "Everything's fine."

He wasn't having any of it. "You're _bleeding_! I told you not to wander around without me!" he practically roared, before rounding on Ariesa with an anger she had never seen directed at her before. "What happened here?! Why is she hurt? Why didn't you stop it?" Releasing Pearl from his grasp, he knelt down beside her instead, and, in an intimate gesture at complete odds with his manner of a moment before, took her small hand in his and placed against the blue stone that was his own core.

"I tried!" Ariesa shouted back. "I was here, and you weren't!" She met his glare, like he was a stranger. Faintly, she noticed the oddest thing – the blood that had trickled down Pearl's face no longer flowed, and she seemed to fill somehow with life again, straightening slightly.

"I would have been with her, but I left to help you!" he retorted, a look both angry and mortally offended crossing his face. He let Pearl go, then stood himself and looked down to meet her eyes.

Ariesa could only look at him, incredulous, but reminded herself of how she had felt earlier, with the burden of another upon her. And she had only done it for a couple hours; this had been his entire lifetime. She wanted to shout, to fight, she was angry as hell and wished she could hit him, but compassion crept in as well.

"Elazul, please!" Pearl begged, climbing to her feet and straightening her dress nervously. "I want... I need... if I try to remember something... I feel like I can... please, Elazul help _me_!" she cried, the last coming out in a pained shriek.

Elazul melted, and the anger dulled to reveal bone-deep weariness behind. "Pearl..." he began, but no argument came out. "Very well."

He turned to Ariesa, but for her the same fearful anger as before was there. "Give her some time here. I will clear the way back down. Take her to the bottom of the tower when she's ready, but if anything happens to her, I will kill you, understand?" His expression was half-mad, fanatical. Ariesa balked, but he was gone.

And there, at the doorway, was Daena and the twins. "What happened here?" Daena asked. "Elazul practically ran us over."

_What had happened, indeed?_ "I'm not sure." She looked back at Pearl, who was wandering the room in wonder, occasionally leaning down to touch the carvings as if they might speak to her. "Do you want a moment, Pearl?"

"Um... maybe..." Pearl had lost all her panic from only a moment before, and now was... wherever her head was.

"We'll be outside, then," Daena offered.

Pearl hung her head. "I don't think it will tell me anything else tonight. We should go... Elazul is waiting... I'll get yelled at again."

Ariesa huffed. "And I'll yell back again."

"It's not like that, Ariesa," Pearl told her, gently grabbing her hand. "He's like that because he cares about me. He shouldn't yell, but... he's not very good at love."

Silence hung in the air for a moment, as Ariesa pondered the statement. Then, wordlessly, they exited the chamber of fate, the doors solemnly closing behind them.

----------------------------------------

The mood was subdued as they carefully picked their way back down the tower, which seemed much more inclined to let them leave than it had to let them in. No monsters were to be found as they walked along in silence; Elazul had kept his word there.

Finally Ariesa had to say something. "What was that, back there, with the core?"

"Huh?" Pearl blinked briefly, uncomprehending. "Oh, you mean what Elazul did?" Ariesa nodded. "He actually didn't do much, he just let me draw off some of his own strength."

"But I thought that took tears and stuff - " Ariesa was somewhat confused.

"That's for healing, and it's more permanent. He can't do that," she said, tapping her lip where it had clotted, and seemed nearly healed. "This is... sort of a temporary thing... and it could help him too, like if a guardian is injured first he can help her long enough for her to heal him with her tears - "

Pearl stopped there and looked away, but Ariesa heard the unspoken remainder. _With her tears. If she has any._

They reached the bottom with no sign of Elazul. But apparently as he was clearing out the Tower, he had missed a spot, for they were not alone. For the second time that night, they were greeted by an unexpected guest.

Sandra.

"Sorry I couldn't join you earlier," she said smoothly, "but the Tower didn't seem to want me to come up. Couldn't find even one staircase, but who goes up, must come down, right?"

"Where's Elazul?" Pearl demanded.

Sandra grinned evilly. "Why so worried? You would know if anything happened to him, wouldn't you? He just went outside. What kind of knight leaves his guardian anyway? No matter, I'll take out the weaker first."

"Who are you calling weak?" piped up Bud.

Sandra seemed surprised to see the others, but recovered quickly enough. "So you _all_ want to help Jumi, huh? No matter."

Ariesa wasn't really in the mood for conversation, and she struck. Sandra leaped out her way deftly, and the sword caught only empty air.

"No, I don't think so," she replied. With a snap of her fingers, a familiar sight rose seemingly from the floor of the tower itself.

"What _is_ that?" shouted Daena.

"A jewel eater," Sandra responded smugly. "Your friend there has seen it the last time I met her. A creature of a thousand years ago. No appetite for Mana, just for precious things of the earth. Rocks, bones, and… jewels." She smirked evilly. "They've been contorted a little for my use, of course, and now they're just hollow shells that obey my command."

"Stay back, kids. Magic won't help," Daena warned.

Ariesa was barely listening to the monologue, her entire being focused on dodging the thing's enormous, pointed stone legs, and swiping where she could. The vulnerable spots were limited, and she remembered Elazul had only killed the last with a direct shot to the eye.

She had no chance to strike that vulnerable part; with every movement she was conscious of Pearl, and the thing seemed determined to go straight for the guardian. The sharp teeth surrounding that eye snapped in her direction, long neck whipping around to try and catch Ariesa off-guard. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Pearl scrunching herself up against the wall as if she could squiggle right through it.

Daena dove between the monster's legs with her cat-like agility, providing enough distraction to keep the jewel beast from its target. Still, it advanced inexorably, and Ariesa despaired of protecting her charge.

Suddenly, the thing reared, emitting a shrill shriek of pain, and Ariesa was incredibly grateful to spy Elazul, sword piercing some vulnerable spot and causing it to recoil in pain. As it whipped its neck around frantically, she took advantage, and with a final, focused, swing, drove between the jaws and into the eye as she had seen Elazul do.

The monster crumpled, its heavy rock body shaking the tower to its foundations.

"Don't worry about cleanup, I'll take it back with me," Sandra practically sang, and Ariesa looked up to see her impossibly poised on one of the thin ledges overlooking the main room. "Quite a partner you have, Pearl," she commented nonchalantly.

"Which one?" demanded Ariesa.

"Does it matter? I'll be back for you soon enough, my pretty," she said, addressing Pearl. "As for you, my girl," she said, looking in Ariesa's direction, "you had best be wary about where you get involved. Those who cry for the Jumi turn to stone." Elazul brandished his sword ineffectually. With a laugh, Sandra leapt into the air, and somehow in midair, disappeared as if she had never been.

"Is it true?" Ariesa whispered to Pearl. "Someone can turn to stone?"

Pearl looked almost sick. "I've heard… from Elazul, who heard it somewhere… I think it is," she finished with a rush. "I don't want that to happen to you," she admitted.

"_DAMMIT_!" Elazul shouted towards the ceiling above, punching the wall with his crystal hand. The wall took it worse than the arm, the ancient brick crumbling to leave a slightly fist-shaped imprint. He followed with a string of far worse expletives from a variety of international locations, and Daena covered the ears of the nearest twin... Bud, as it turned out.

Eventually his tirade calmed, though his eyes still flashed as he turned to his guardian, she patiently waiting though still a little wide-eyed. "Come along, Pearl. You're going back to Ariesa's house. And then, Geo?" he directed the question at Ariesa.

"You should go on ahead, Elazul. I'll take Pearl back to the house," Daena said. He nodded, and Ariesa was left with her turn to answer.

She wanted to say something petty, but she remembered what Pearl had said upstairs. She let herself look a little deeper.. and she saw it. Fear. Fear for someone he cared for.

He owed her an apology, but that could wait. "Geo," she affirmed. "I'll be there in one week." With a nod, the brash young knight strolled out and was gone again.

The smaller woman looked down at her feel, shuffling slightly. "Elazul… Am I going to die?" she asked morosely.

"Of course not!" Ariesa gasped. "You're just shaken, that's all."

"But not just today... Elazul is going to Geo, and I know why. He's looking for others, he thinks he can save everyone... if he finds another guardian, he'll want to defend them. He doesn't understand why you can't have two guardians, I'll be the one left out and alone…"

"Are knights so fickle as that?" wondered Daena.

"I'll be your knight, Pearl!" Bud puffed up.

That at least earned a thin smile, but it fell soon enough. "Ariesa… I'm not stupid. I can't make it on my own… the world is a hard place, I don't know how to fight…"

Ariesa was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of what Pearl must be feeling. "You won't be alone. Elazul will never leave you for another guardian, but if he does... I'll be your knight. For real. Even if I'm not so good at it."

Pearl seemed reassured. "Thank you, Ariesa, but... all the same... I know I'm supposed to want the Jumi to be together, I know how much Elazul wants that… but sometimes I hope he never finds another."

She looked outside, no doubt, in the direction Elazul was in. "I always feel like I'm going to be left behind..." She paused for another moment. "His heart used to be so frozen inside, I wasn't sure what to think of him at first. Not with me, but to everyone else. How much room is there really inside his heart?"

Ariesa wondered that for a moment. If _Pearl_ didn't have an answer, she certainly knew no better.


	23. Secrets: Jewels

**23: Secrets: Jewels**

Lady Blackpearl wandered one of the glowing corridors that traversed the Bejeweled City, the city of the Jumi. Not corridors truly, but tiered terraces that saw over more of the world as one climbed higher and higher.

Some thought that they were perilously close to the Empire here, but the valley leading to the city they had named Etansel was pretty well inaccessible to military assault, which was part of what they wanted. And the gemstones of this valley had picked up some of the Mana of the old Earth stone, or at least it felt that way. It gave her some much-needed comfort.

The Jumi had been splintered to the four corners of the earth, at first during the chaos of war, then as they fled from former allies, as those who had seen their power in the war tried to claim that power for their own.

The hunting had already begun.

People still thought they could somehow create Mana out of dust. You would think Anise would have shown differently, but people never really changed. And now that the mages had exhausted their other possibilities, they were looking towards Jumi, towards the powers that their cores contained, cores inextricably connected to the Jumi's lives. It made Blackpearl shiver slightly, and touch her own core as if to reassure herself it was still safely there.

Years passed, and as the hunting of Jumi increased, more and more decided to leave the rest of the world behind, and now, finally, they had a place to come to. Few left, once they arrived, including Blackpearl herself, and idly she realized she wasn't going to be able to meet with the dragons anymore.

They needed this city. They needed to be free of the conflicts that had arose since the world had been forced to live without Mana. The world was peaceful at the moment, the Fairie Wars having more or less finished a century or so before, and Anuella herself missing and possibly dead. That part she found one of the most sorrowful; Blackpearl had admired the woman, and it was a sad end to a woman who had started with only the best of intentions.

But Blackpearl suspected it would be only a matter of time before something, or someone, disrupted the world once again, the danger worsening the longer the world went without Mana.

Motion behind her caused her to turn, and Diana strode up to her. That was one person whose presence demanded her immediate attention. Diana was their leader, the one know as the Clarius, but more than that, she was Blackpearl's guardian. To be technical, Blackpearl was the Clarius Knight, but she considered that a formal name that only others really worried about.

The Lucidia had decided the pairing of knights and guardians was the wiseast way to go, and had been quickly adopted. The knights encompassed the true values the knights of Forcena once had had, and the guardians were the keepers of the flow of Mana itself, guarding it as memories inside themselves, living memories in rock.

The pair was meant to be stronger than the sum of the individuals. Without the guidance of the Goddess, without her Gift of choice between dark and light, they made their own way of protecting Mana. One took more of the strength used for healing, and the other more of the strength used for fighting, and they kept each other safe, and balanced, as the elements themselves needed to be balanced.

Diana was enigmatic. From Lorimar, part of the Altenan icelands, most of which were now deserted except for a few hardy loyalists. Lorimar, however. was southern enough to not be completely frigid, and always had been only loosely connected to the ancient kingdom of magic. The city survived now by selling their particular brand of dark iron, mostly to the Empire, which greedily snapped it up. Diana herself was a slender and elegant, palely beautiful Venus, curling light-brown hair framing ice-blue eyes, rumored to be descended from the royal family, perhaps Angela herself.

_Angela_, thought Blackpearl. I am surprised I even remember that name.

That was the thing about becoming Jumi. She hadn't realized how many would seek it, in these times without Mana, but Jumi were the last bit of Mana left; they were what the fairies once had been. The Goddess may be gone, but the Jumi belonged to Her nevertheless, and the rest of who you once had been slipped away. She could barely remember her mother, and that made her sadder than she wanted to feel. She pushed it down roughly.

It was the dark part of being Jumi. It was why few had children, doomed to first outlive them, and then forget them. She strained to remember she once had another name. But once you took a Jumi name, that was you, and you never looked back.

The other woman was silent for a moment, leaning on the staff of the Clarius, the jewel-encrusted staff that resonated with the Mana of the race's home. Diana did not like to speak until she was sure her words would carry the weight she desired. But after a moment, she began. "You have heard the latest?"

"I hear lots of things," Blackpearl replied nonchalantly.

"There was a group who was preaching that the Jumi needed to be returned what they had given to so many, that the Jumi had sacrificed parts of their own lives, in order to heal others."

"Didn't we, though?" Blackpearl inquired. "Every tear a shard of our own Mana, our own lives." _We thought it was our responsibility, _she thought to herself,_ but look where it got us._

"Perhaps. I believe they were thinking in a more literal way. They thought that tears could be returned, so they assembled a group of people who had been healed during the war, found some Jumi, and tried to cry in return."

"And?" Blackpearl said impatiently, knowing Diana's pause was only for dramatic effect.

"And," Diana continued. "They turned to stone. Every last one of them. As hard as a core itself, but with no life to it. The Jumi who reported this said they felt as if every bit of life had been drained, deader than a corpse."

That was disturbing. "Is there an explanation? You wouldn't have brought this for us to talk about just to gossip."

"The Jumi said... it felt like their own cores were taking the life out of them. So perhaps, in a sense, the others accomplished what they had set out to do, but I can't justify the cost." Diana paused, and Blackpearl saw something close to actual uncertainty on her face. "I... I am afraid. If this is happening... it means our own cores are diminishing, and there is no way to replace it. You and I, we are committed to keeping the Jumi from extinction, but how?"

"No way to replenish the cores of those who live, and fewer every day able to find the core they need to join us," agreed Blackpearl.

Diana grew calm again. "We may have to be harder. We… may not be able to allow the Jumi to cry for anyone but our own."

Despite it all, that was perhaps further than Blackpearl had expected to take it. That was perhaps further than Blackpearl had expected to take it. Most already no longer cried for anyone but another Jumi, realizing that their own lives were at stake. But to make that custom an edict? It burned inside for her to realize it had come to this.

"Think on that for some time. Let it rest for a year or so, and see if you feel the same," Blackpearl advised.

"I will wait. For a time," Diana agreed, though Blackpearl could already see the decision would be the same. The woman was beautiful, but as hard as her icy core. A hard leader, for a hard people, Blackpearl thought to herself, almost giggling at the pun. _Few realize yet how "hard" we really are._

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Diana would not be swayed, and it was finally announced some time later as the Jumi gathered, in the chambers of the Clarius, surmounting the mountain that had become their city, to discuss that very thing. All had been welcome who wished to attend, but most remained in hushed silence as their leaders spoke.

"Perhaps we made a mistake helping during the war," mused Diana.

"You think?" Blackpearl replied. "Was there a choice, back then?"

She had asked herself the same thing many times before. Their purpose had been twofold: one, to preserve Mana in any way they could, being linked to it themselves, so the race could survive; and two, to heal some of the senseless slaughter that was happening, healing with their tears on either side, it didn't matter.

All there knew their history. They had been called the "race of friendship" in the Fairie Wars, but after it all, after people had gotten a glimpse as too the power of the Jumi, able to heal the wounded while healing quicker themselves, and increase the power of Mana itself through their cores... they found themselves a prize to be fought over as well. The cores that gave them life were just another artifact containing Mana, and the bodies containing them, obstacles to be worked around.

It was her fault, in a way. Even now, many still searched for the legendary stone called the seventh moon, knowing only that it had the power to defeat Anise. Blackpearl's hand went to her own collarbone.

"Too many now know that Jumi cores have the power of magic. _True _magic, the power of life itself. We should have nothing more to do with them," Rubens said harshly, echoing her thoughts. Ruby was a hard stone, and Rubens was a hard person. Fire and ice, he and Diana, but both nearly impossible to break. "They take our cores, and we..."

"Die?" spoke up Florina. "The thing we though we never would?"

All turned towards the girl, the youngest of their number. _Whatever had possessed a thirteen-year-old-girl_, Blackpearl wondered, _to become Jumi,_ _with her whole life ahead of her?_ And where had she even _found_ the stone? Florina had been reticent with her background, and barely spoke, making this comment a surprise. But when she did speak, she spoke only the truth.

Rubens' expression turned to stone - so to speak - and Diana blushed slightly, the color stark against her pale cheeks. Sappho nodded thoughtfully, though, the sapphire guardian accompanied by his aquamarine knight, Quiyan. Both had been acquaintances of Diana many years before, in Lorimar.

"But our deaths are not forever," Alexandra said, stepping from the shadows. Her core turned eerily from purple to green as she stepped into the light; she insisted it was Earth stone from Forcena, but the rumor was that she had found a piece of Shade's own stone, and Blackpearl wondered if she could deal with it. Not everyone could handle the power of Shade. Yet, the young woman reminded Blackpearl somewhat of what she had once been. "Clarius, the guardians can always bring us back if the core is not shattered completely."

"Yes, but only if we can find the core," Florina continued. "How many are lost, somewhere, out there?" Murmurs spread through the crowd, and few sounded positive.

Diana flinched slightly. "The meeting is at an end for today. Please leave us," she asked. Dozens of Jumi began to file out, leaving the Lucidia by themselves. Florina curtsied lightly to Diana before she turned as well, and Alexandra hopped off the ledge she had been seated on to follow Florina. _A strange friendship, those two._

"What is it?" Blackpearl asked, suddenly full of worry for her guardian, as if her own core could not tell Diana's concern. Rubens put his arms around her in a strangely gentle contrast to his harsh words before, as Diana turned towards the wall.

"I thought it would be enough if the Jumi did not cry for others, but, it's not so simple. It's... changing, my knight," Diana said. "The tears lessen. The guardians tell me it gets harder to cry even for other Jumi."

"Some are doing on purpose," Blackpearl said. "They're afraid, afraid of those who want to claim their core, and they lessen the flow of Mana, but now they have no way to get it back, and they only make themselves more vulnerable."

"_All who cry for the Jumi turn to stone_," Sappho added. "That's what is being said around now. "The rest of the world wants to forbid any contact with Jumi. Better than being hunted, I suppose."

"Some call the Jumi 'dirt' now," Rubens added. "As if our core is nothing without magic, we have no value as people."

"To many, we don't," Blackpearl chided slightly. "That's why so many allow themselves to become less."

"They allow it, as a survival instinct? Or it simply runs out?" Diana wondered. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "My own tears... they are harder and harder to force out..."

That sent a chill through Blackpearl. If the Clarius herself lost the power to cry... what then?

Sappho leaned forward, chin rested in hand, thinking. "We have long lifespans, but fragile cores. We can live as long as the core remains undamaged, but we did not realize that healing itself might weaken it."

Diana had not yet turned to face them, but seemed to talk to the jeweled wall of the chamber. "Perhaps the Jumi are doomed to die out."

Sappho got up and turned Diana away from the wall, Rubens reluctantly letting go. "There is always a way," he said gently. One tear, blue as the ocean, fell from his eye, and he caught it on a fingertip to touch it against Diana's diamond core. Her eyes went wide at the jolt that Blackpearl could feel even in her own core, through the bond. "You must retire as the Clarius guardian before you are drained completely."

"But... I have a responsibility..." Diana sniffled slightly, but remained entirely free of either tears, either human or Jumi. The one tear from Sappho, though, seemed to give her some of her confidence back.

Rubens caught on. "Diana... there is no reason you cannot remain the _leader_. We will say... we've decided to make the Clarius a position of perhaps a hundred years? You've occupied the position that long, and more, already."

"Then... who..." Diana wondered.

"I will take on the responsibility," Sappho interjected. "For the next hundred years, and then after that, if the situation has not righted itself, we can choose another, and another."

Diana seemed to like the idea. Or perhaps she knew it was the only way. But she turned to Blackpearl reluctantly. "Lady Blackpearl, I cannot ask you to lose your place as well."

Blackpearl shrugged, stretching out her legs to balance them on the rock across from her, but Quiyan interjected. "Lady Blackpearl, I would be honored if you would watch over my guardian as Clarius. I am sure there are plenty of other available guardians in the meantime."

"I am content either way, but... what of Diana?" She was fairly certain she knew the answer already, and she was not surprised when Rubens spoke up. She was more than certain that the two were lovers; the knight-guardian bond had a way of keeping one informed of such things.

"I will take care of Diana. Lady Blackpearl should remain guardian to Clarius ever after, for as long as she has her strength," Rubens said. Blackpearl noticed Diana's eyes light up slightly, a nearly-flirtatious look in Rubens' direction.

"Then it is settled. Tomorrow, we will announce our new plan for the Jumi," she announced, eyes still drifting in the direction of her new knight-to-be.

"And unless the Goddess steps in, hopefully we will find our way," Blackpearl concluded.


	24. Legends: Luck

**24: Legends: Luck**

Pearl snuggled in a soft blanket next to the fireplace, her core lightly reflecting the flames. Her expression was one of absolute peace, and she sighed in contentment.

Ariesa, meanwhile, was a flurry of activity, getting ready to make it to Geo by Undine's day. She was organizing, double checking, randomly issuing out orders and suggestions, and trying to make her houseguests comfortable in her absence. Pearl didn't seem to notice her ministrations, but Daena put out a hand to stop her the fiftieth time she ran past.

"You're making me nervous, and I'm not going anywhere," her friend told her. Daena was curled up on the couch with a book from the library, as comfortably settled in as Pearl, ready to assume her for-the-moment role as caretaker of the house.

Ariesa stopped, but her mind was racing once again soon enough, looking for what else needed to be done. "Twins?" she called, remembering at the last moment they didn't like being called "kids". "Have you decided if you want to go yet?"

Two purple-haired heads looked up from the kitchen table. Bud spoke first, but reluctantly. "Well, uh... I sort of got kicked out there. I don't know if I am so eager to go back."

"I want to go," Lisa said brightly. "The teachers liked _me_." Bud stuck out his tongue at her.

"Then get your bags ready, Lisa. Well, Bud, you're the man of the house," Ariesa teased. "We'll be back soon enough." It took barely another hour for the ever-organized Lisa to get herself together, and soon enough Ariesa found the younger girl by her side at her doorway. Daena rose from the couch to see them out, Bud and Pearl lingering closely behind. Lisa embraced her sibling a bit tearfully, and Ariesa hugged Daena with a bit more seriousness. Turning, she and Lisa left down the steps to the open road.

The sproutling's giggle could be heard as they left.

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Ishe was _hot_. Ariesa wasn't sure what else she expected from a city built so close to someplace called the Valley of Flames, but it still came as a surprise.

She wished she had taken the long way, and if she hadn't made the commitment to meet Elazul in a certain period of time, she wouldn't have followed his directions. The longer route over the highway would have taken them down to the coastal town of Luon, then back around skirting the eastern edge of the jungle down to Geo; nearly twice as long, time-wise, but significantly cooler.

"It used to be hotter," Lisa told her, "before they got the jungles to start growing. Just think how bad it would have been if this was _all_ desert, the oases drying up. It also happens to be the perfect environment to work platinum, and that's why you can't get it anywhere else."

"They sure teach you a lot at that magic academy, don't they?" Ariesa observed.

Lisa stood up straighter, beaming slightly at the compliment. "It was part of the 'History of Geo' class. I got the best grade."

"Ever thought of going back? I mean, your outside experience should be keeping you up with your class by now," Ariesa asked, then immediately regretted it as Lisa's face fell.

"Well, you see... I couldn't really be away from Bud, leave him all alone. Our father dropped out there too. Maybe someday... but not yet..." She didn't seem to want to discuss it more, so Ariesa merely let the subject drop.

The heat was still bothering her, but as the day gave way to evening, she found herself warming to the city, so to speak. The houses were small, low things, with few windows to keep out the heat, but as the night came on, and the oppressive desert heat cooled to something resembling comfort, the same people who had barely shuffled through the day now livened up, as lights went on and shouts of conversation could be heard from inside and outside houses. She and Lisa decided to take advantage, and ambled through the lively town carelessly, finally settling on an outdoor café on the main street for a late-night meal.

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Lisa found herself enjoying the time away with Ariesa. It was like a little mini-vacation itself, even if their trips to vacation spots always seemed to involve running into trouble. Who would have thought they would have found the problems they did in upscale Polpota?

A tap on her shoulder interrupted her dinner, and she turned to see a familiar face. "Kathinja!" she cried.

Kathinja's appearance was surprising to some. She was part basilisk, and had its scaly green skin over most of her body, and a shock of flame-red spiky hair around a more human face. But she had always been kind towards Lisa and Bud, who had appreciated the warm-yet-gruff way she treated her students. "Well, it's good to see you here, Lisa. Is your disaster-prone twin brother around here someplace, too?"

"No... Bud's at home," Lisa replied politely.

"Home?" Kathinja questioned, hands on hips. "Where are you living now? I've been a little worried about the two of you. I had hoped you, at least, would stay with us."

"Well, about that…" Lisa made introductions to a slightly puzzled-looking Ariesa. "This is Kathinja, my favorite teacher from the academy! Kathinja, this is Ariesa. We live with her just outside of Domina."

Ariesa motioned Kathinja to an open chair, and Kathinja sat down gratefully, accepting a glass of desert cooler. "Domina. A quiet, peaceful town in the lakeside area. Not a bad place to be. What brings you all the way out here to hot, sticky Ishe?" She motioned to her snake-scaled tail. "Not everyone is as comfortable out her as me."

"We're meeting a friend in Geo," Ariesa replied, Lisa noticing she avoided the word "Jumi". _Probably not a bad idea_, she thought.

Kathinja half-laughed. "Well, if he's anywhere in town, he's probably completely distracted by all the rumors floating around. Our principal, it seems, has finally gone off the deep end."

"Mephianse?" Lisa asked. "What's that weirdo doing now? The only one stranger is Thesenis." She suddenly clapped her hand to her mouth in embarrassment. "Oh… I'm sorry, Kathinja, I forgot she was your friend."

"No worries, Lisa. I know my friend isn't exactly the most normal," Kathinja laughed, a bold, rolling sound. "Well, anyway, Mephianse, you know he's been absolutely obsessed with magic since his brother died, looking for fairy's treasure and whatever he can get his hands on. That's hardly a secret." Ariesa leaned forward in interest. "He's completely convinced that magic is everything, and now he claims he's found the location of the ultimate weapon in an old book, one of Valda's. This weapon is somewhere buried in the desert, and now he's looking for it. I hope it's just scholarly intrigue, and he's not planning to do anything with it, though one never knows with that wacko."

"We ran into someone in Polpota looking for much the same," Ariesa replied. Neither she nor Lisa had known exactly what Thoma and Sandra had been talking about, but it sounded pretty serious.

Kathinja looked surprised at that. "Tell me more," she replied, and Ariesa and Lisa between them related the story of Polpota, including the Jumi core, though still neatly leaving Elazul out of it.

Kathinja's tone grew serious. "The ultimate weapon," she mused, echoing Ariesa. "Is everyone looking for that?"

"What do you know about it?" asked Ariesa, intrigued.

Kathinja leaned in. "I doubt there is any such thing," she replied. "Not a 'weapon' in a way they think, anyway. The rumors probably derived from some poorly translated legend about the Sword of Mana."

"What _is_ that?" Lisa pouted. "They never covered that in class."

Kathinja gave her a look at once both scolding and indulgent. "It's in the senior year classes, dear. It's not an easy subject, made harder by the fact that no one is sure if it even exists. There's quite a lot of philosophical debate in those classes."

"Oh," Lisa said, biting her lip in consideration. "Can you give me a syllabus?"

Kathinja sighed. "It's been said to be 'an opening in space, a doorway to beyond, the key to the Goddess," she replied, "an instrument of great power. But what kind of power? And why didn't Anise use it? Did she not find it? Couldn't she?"

Ariesa contemplated silently. "A Sword of Mana," she finally said. "A link to the Goddess, to the universe… the answer to everything… It sounds like a bunch of hooey to me, but… isn't it the sort of thing this troubled world could use? No wonder people are looking for it."

Kathinja leaned in closely. "It _is_ true," she insisted. "And I wonder if it is our only hope."

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There wasn't really any choice, the way Ariesa saw it. The lead about a powerful weapon was just too good to pass up.

Besides, it was more or less on their way anyway, and even with Elazul's hastily scrawled directions, Kathinja warned them the desert was a tricky place to travel through, and a harder place to find the way out of. Staying with a local seemed the best policy.

It wasn't long out of Ishe that Ariesa was forced to once again revise her definition of _hot_. The desert outside was _scalding_. "It was once called the Desert of Scorching Heat," Kathinja relayed, "before Navarre assimilated into the other countries of the world. A rather practical group of thieves, the Navarrese were. Eventually someone - probably the town of Ishe - decided that 'Duma Desert' might be a little better for tourism."

"I think they should have kept the old name," said Lisa, kicking a bleached white skull. The snout crumbled right off.

Eventually, even whining took too much energy, and they settled into a quiet, scorching hike, with Kathinja following some map she had taken out of the school library. At a certain point she shushed them, not that anyone had said anything in well over an hour. "I think it's this way," she said, and stealthily they crept over a tall, sandy dune, voices reaching the ears from the other side as they grew nearer the top.

Ariesa poked her head cautiously over the peak, and was surprised to see… a giant cannon. She did have to give Mephianse props, if anything looked like an ultimate weapon, this was it. A group of chattering students, undifferentiated in the school robes of the Geo magic academy, scattered around the contraption, mixing reagents, chanting spells, and doing all sorts of magic whatnot.

In the middle, atop a small rise, a bull-faced man read out loud directions from a heavy tome he held in both hands. This could only be the Mephianse they were looking for.

"What now?" wondered Lisa, popping up beside her.

"Simple," Kathinja answered. "We put a stop to this." And she stood up to her full height, tail shifting for balance.

Mephianse looked up from the book without a trace of surprise. "Kathinja," he said coolly. "Isn't it your day to teach? I will have to document you if you called in sick."

"It's my day off," Kathinja replied with faux sweetness, "and I heard there was going to be a _fabulous_ display of magic in the desert that I and my visitors wouldn't want to miss. So why don't you get this thing started?"

Mephianse suddenly looked uncomfortable. "I must warn you, this is a weapon of great power and Mana."

"I'd like to check it out too," popped up Ariesa behind her. She sat down cross-legged on the sand, jumping up as it burned her bare legs. She adjusted her skirt slightly and resumed her place. Lisa cautiously sat beside her.

"It will be just a few minutes," Mephianse replied grudgingly, and returned his attention to the students, some of whom positively squeaked under his glare and rushed back to their tasks.

Well, Ariesa thought, all the scurrying seemed to be doing _something_, as the cannon began to glow and hum slightly, turning into a whine, and then a roar. "I think it's ready!" called one student over the din.

Mephianse gave the signal. One small spark of fire, and...

_BOOM_! Ariesa covered her ears instinctively, but all she saw was some sparkles shoot a few feet up and fall back to the earth. She waited for a long moment, but it seemed that yes, truly, that was all the cannon was going to produce.

"Is that all it does?" asked Lisa. Mephianse looked positively disappointed.

"Professor, there's some sort of inscription on the bottom," said a student, dusting off some sand from the base.

"Read it, then," responded the irritated teacher.

"It says - " he frowned, dusting off a bit more. "It reads, 'Bon Voyage Travel Company'."

"Maybe we're supposed to climb in it?" asked one student. Snickers erupted all around, with a few shouts of "I dare you!"

Meanwhile, Mephianse looked absolutely livid. "Stupid book," he said, drop-kicking it across the ground.

Ariesa deftly caught it in midair, and rifled through some pages. It was in the old language, but notes throughout gave translations, all the way to the cover, where "Book of Rune" was spelled out neatly below the unfamiliar words of the title. "If you don't want it, may I keep it?" she asked politely. "For my personal library."

"Go right ahead," Mephianse retorted. "It's just another useless tome of magic."

"Seems the principal of the magic school is getting a bit disillusioned," murmured Lisa behind her.

Tantrum over, Mephianse sat in the sand, and began organizing his students to return, barely acknowledging Kathinja's goodbye wave as Lisa and Ariesa stood to follow her. "He'll catch up," she dismissed breezily, and soon enough they left the group in the desert behind.

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Lisa squealed as they climbed the city gate into Geo, tearing up the stairs past the golden statue that greeted them.

Her energy was infectious, and it bit Ariesa as well. Actually, the whole energy of the town was contagious. Geo was one of the bigger towns on this eastern edge of the world, and the bustle was intoxicating. They elbowed their way through the marketplace, Ariesa struggling to keep tabs on the two others with her past the throngs of people, until they finally made their way up to the entrance to the magic academy and Kathinja bid them goodbye. "Don't be a stranger, Lisa," she wished the younger girl.

All over the grassy courtyard past the gates, students ran around, nearly tripping over their robes on their way to and from classes. Lisa seemed to know them all, and many stopped to say hello.

"Lisa? Is that really you? How have you been? Where's Bud?" questions came from uniformed students surrounding her. "Is that your master?" asked one, pointing one finger practically up Ariesa's nose.

It was pleasant to see, and Ariesa realized how important it was to run across one's old friends. Suddenly, she realized she missed Elazul. She was trying hard to be mad at him, but a week or so had a way of dulling the edge off one's anger.

Lisa answered all their questions with chatty happiness. Ariesa listened to her relate how she and Bud had been taken in as apprentices. It gave her a pang of guilt, realizing that so far she had been a rather neglectful teacher to them, but she pushed it down in the face of Lisa's energy.

Surprising to her was the amount of dissatisfaction she heard from some of the students. Over and over, she heard them criticizing the school, the magic, the teachers, one or two wondering if they should just drop out completely.

"Why are they so unhappy?" asked Ariesa.

Lisa contemplated. "It can be really frustrating, listening to the way Mana has been used for hundreds of years, and trying to make out that it's a good thing. Bud never had any patience for doing things the way he was told, and that's part of why he was always in trouble. Mostly, I think the complainers just want to be listened to, to be taken seriously."

"I can understand that," Ariesa responded dryly.

They checked into the inn on the main strip, but Ariesa's inquiries revealed there was no one matching Elazul's description staying there. "I 'aven't seen anyone the like," the teapot-woman – a Dove, Ariesa thought the race was called - at the counter answered her. "But while you're waitin' for your lad, why not try a bit of shopping? We have stores for music instruments, robes, weapons, jewelry, exotic foodstuffs..."

"Jewelry!" Ariesa gasped. Lisa looked perplexed, and Ariesa pulled her young apprentice hurriedly.

"What's the big deal about jewelry?" the elf-girl asked. "You suddenly want to go buy a new pair of earrings? I mean, I like shopping as much as any other girl, but..."

"We make some excellent pieces made out of our local mineral, Geo Germanium," the teapot offered, apparently eavesdropping.

"No, _jewelry_ is something that the Jumi are called," Ariesa filled in, keeping one eye on the nosy teapot. "One of the nicer names, actually. And some of those 'jewelry' shops sell… Jumi cores. Elazul told me so."

"Elazul..." Lisa looked some combination of scared and nauseated.

Ariesa nodded. "Elazul said this city used to be a spot for Jumi core trafficking. It makes me worried that this shop is one of _those. _Let's go check it out."

They stepped out onto the mall avenue, scurrying past vendors waving trinkets and food, crying their wares. A few hurried inquiries directed them to the place, and soon enough they were stepping out from the bright noonday sun under a banner labeled "Wendell", the spelling slightly different from that of the southern lake city. Ariesa started to wonder about the lucrative gem trade that flowed through the city of the same name, and fingered a bracelet she had from an excursion there with a feeling of sudden abhorrence, wondering if all the jewels in that city as well were indeed innocent.

Despite the crowds outside, the shop was empty expect for the proprietor, and one familiar sand-caped man. Elazul.

"Thank the Goddess," Ariesa exhaled. He turned at the sound of her voice.

"Ariesa..." He stepped towards her, one hand shading his eyes from the brightness coming through the door. "I..." He swallowed, and there was a long pause. "I am glad you came."

She understood. That was "I'm sorry" in Elazul-speak. It was enough.

She took a few steps forward, and hugged him with a bare squeeze, just enough for her to whisper, "I thought that maybe _jewelry _shop meant... when you weren't at the inn."

He shook his head as she released him. "No. I've been checking it out, and it's not that sort of place. And Alex here - " he jerked a thumb towards the red-headed, glasses-wearing proprietor - "found me a room to rent right next door. The last place you would look for a Jumi, huh?"

"We don't deal in Jumi cores here. This is not a morgue," Alex said, affronted. "But so many people think jewelry stores do, that I am surprised to even see a Jumi in the city."

"Well, now that we're together again, could we be on our way?" Elazul asked. He must be feeling regretful, Ariesa thought, if he actually _asked _to do anything.

"Where to?" asked Lisa, looking up from fingering some of the necklaces in the cases. "Ooh, pink quartz. Good for health and well-being, balance."

"I could use some of that about now," Elazul responded dryly. "I was walking through the center of town yesterday, and there was this girl working on a spell with one of the professors, this weird plate-guy... "

"Nunuzac," Lisa piped up. "It's not really him. He's caught in another dimension, so that's just his interface for communication in this world."

Elazul just looked at her. "Ri-ight. Anyway, I felt something in my core, and I swear... I think she was Jumi."

"Did you talk to her?" Ariesa asked excitedly. That would be only the third Jumi she, at least, knew existed.

"No, there was this flash of light, and by the time I could see again, she was long gone. But she must be at the magic academy. That's where I was off to now."

"The magic academy... " Lisa inadvertently squealed in excitement, barreling out the door with the energy of the young. "Well, what are you two waiting for? Let's go!"

Elazul turned to address Ariesa. "What is _she_ so excited about?"

"She used to go to school here. Seems she still has a lot of friends. Well, if there's a Jumi here, let's see if we can't find a new friend for you as well," she teased. Elazul gave her a withering look, before leading the way out of the shop.

----------------------------------------

They caught up with Lisa at the entrance to the building. "Come on, you two, what are you waiting for?" she shouted, bouncing up and down on her toes excitedly.

"He's old," Ariesa joshed, pointing a finger at Elazul, pointedly _not_ looking back at the glare he was probably directing at her. Lisa obviously didn't care one way or the other, rushing in even before they were halfway across the courtyard.

The Magic Academy of Geo was a grand affair, and the hallway into which they entered was a high-ceilinged display room that befitted an institution of such prestige. Lining the walls were a series of display cases with archaic objects, and a blurb of description below each. Behind the display was a painting of a quite beautiful, violet-haired woman, but peeling paint marred its surface, and there was no inscription as to who it had been.

Ariesa paused at a worn stone tablet, some writing she could not read engraved on it. _Cryptic masonry from the city of Pedan, renamed Mindas when the University moved to the city that now is Geo, year N.G. 165, _it read_. Now a ruined memory of the fairy wars and the civilization that was lost before._

"Elazul, come look at this, it's really interesting," she called. No answer. "Elazul?"

She turned to see him far down the hallway, lost in contemplation of one of the other display cases. Rather than calling after him again and disrupting the atmosphere of the hall, she walked towards him.

The case he was looking at was a fine sculpture of sand, in the shape of a rose. He caught her looking at it, and motioned to the placard below.

"_Sand Rose, circa ???. Representing the desert, an image of the rose in the Sanctuary of Mana, that was turned to crystal, a living memory in rock,"_ Ariesa read aloud. Elazul did not respond. She left him for a moment, until she couldn't bear the waiting. "You don't like it?"

He put his hands on the edges of the display case and hung his head forward, and she worried for a moment she had said the wrong thing. He sighed, finally. "I don't have good memories of the desert. I had some luck there, but even so…"

Ariesa contemplated stepping closer to him, but somehow, it felt like he wanted a little distance. "A rose in the sanctuary of Mana. We were discussing the Sword of Mana on the way over."

"The Sword of Mana?" Elazul looked up at her.

"You've heard of it?"

"Pearl said the name, one time, long ago…" His eyes drifted away. "But then the memory was gone, almost as soon as it surfaced… I wanted to hope for something that could help the Jumi like that, but I doubt it will be that easy."

She brushed his hand only lightly as she turned, but he got the hint, and still wearing that melancholy expression, he followed her into the corridors.

Suddenly he straightened. "There!"

Ariesa knew immediately who he was pointing out. She wore the same robe as the other students, but peeking out was hair of a brilliant emerald green. there was... she could only say... a _sparkle _to her.

The Jumi girl was rushing along, and Elazul took a step forward only to be nearly bowled over by a crowd of squealing underclassmen. "Dammit!"

"No cursing in the halls," one scolded him, before running off.

"Where should we look?" he asked, turning to Ariesa.

"Maybe she has the answer?" She pointed to where Lisa was engrossed in conversation with a young man about her age.

The two chattered away for a moment, and then Lisa turned to leave. The young man said something to her, and she turned to give him a quick peck on the cheek.

Ariesa and Elazul turned to look at each other with identical expressions of amusement, forcing themselves to wipe the expression off as Lisa returned to them.

"_Eeww_," she began, wiping her lips on the back of her hand.

"Boyfriend?" Elazul teased.

"Hardly. But Thyme always had a crush on me, and he was happy to tell me all about the girl. I think I may have seen her when I was here, but we didn't have any classes together. Her name's Esmeralda, and I don't think they know she is Jumi, because they don't really know _where _she is from, but she wants to be a magic warrior. She's an apprentice to Nunuzac, and we can find them in the library about this time of day."

"Why would a Jumi want to be a magic warrior?" Ariesa wondered.

Elazul had the answer. "She's a guardian - I can tell by the way she carries herself - and obviously she wants to be a knight." He shook his head. "She has no idea what she's in for."

"Have you ever wanted to be a guardian?" Ariesa inquired, suddenly curious, especially after their Gato conversation.

Elazul snorted. "Well, first I'd need a knight. And frankly, I've gotten so used to taking care of myself, I don't know if I could let anyone take care of me." It was an unusually personal revelation for the Jumi, and Ariesa let it sink in.

"Anyway," Lisa butted in, "the library?"

They nodded to follow, and sure enough, there was the girl in question, her robe removed to show her head of thick green hair, and loose clothing of somewhat less vivid green that looked extremely comfortable in the desert weather. "Plate-guy" was a pretty accurate description of who she was talking to, as well.

"Uh, Lisa, could you perhaps introduce us?" whispered Ariesa.

"Certainly!" Lisa exclaimed, walking up respectfully. "Master Nunuzac?"

"Lisa!" replied a slightly metallic, echoing voice. "Esmeralda, this is Lisa one of my former students. What brings you back here?"

"Hi!" Esmeralda gave them a bright smile.

"Oh, I was just in the neighborhood with my friends, and Kathinja suggested we stop in. This is Elazul and Ariesa."

Nunuzac looked them up and down, or at least that seemed that was what he was doing as the plate wobbled forward and back in midair. "Looks like you've gotten in the company of some warriors here, young Lisa."

"Elazul, your name is?" Esmeralda interrupted. "You're... Jumi!"

"Don't interrupt! Mind your manners, dirt!" Nunuzac admonished.

"_Dirt_?!" Elazul spoke angrily. "That's an ugly slur on our kind! How dare you call her that!"

Nunuzac hmmphed, a strange, echoing sound coming from a pane of glass. "Useless dirt. Jumi cores were once full of Mana, great magical forces and powers of healing."

"And look where it got us." Elazul's voice started to turn cold. "Mages vying to steal our cores, the race dying out."

Esmeralda put one hand on Elazul's shoulder to still him. "It's the truth, Elazul. And the fewer people who believe our cores are worth anything... the fewer who will hunt us. It's better this way. Especially since I don't have a knight, since my sisters... " She reached down to take her hand in his.

"Your sisters? There's more Jumi in this city?!" Elazul exclaimed, with suddenly barely-contained anticipation.

"Well… not here," Esmeralda admitted, eyes suddenly drifting towards the floor. "You know…" she began, "the four of us used to always be together, the way these belong together," she said, motioning to her core. "But then… they were torn from me in the chaos when we all fled the Jumi city... after Clarius Florina was kidnapped, and the powers of healing were no more…" She paused, looking at Elazul suddenly questioningly.

"And the empire closed in to take advantage, attacking the city with full force," he finished. "I know that much, though I was never there."

"I wasn't sure you knew about it," Esmeralda admitted, a bit abashed. "You were lucky to be one of those on the outside, when the empire finally came, smashing whatever was left and walking away with all the wealth they wanted. I wandered alone for a long time before finally coming to Geo. Most think the Jumi were wiped out then," she continued thoughtfully, "but those of us who are left have to do whatever we can to find each other."

Ariesa blinked. Had Esmeralda actually _fluttered her eyelashes_ at Elazul? Suddenly, sadly, she remembered Pearl, so afraid Elazul would leave her for another guardian.

Although, pathetically, it seemed to be working. "So I should be your knight, eh?" he asked, seemingly taken in by Esmeralda's coy expression.

Ariesa grabbed his other shoulder from behind. "Don't you already have a guardian, Elazul? Pearl? Remember Pearl?" Esmeralda looked suddenly chastened.

"You have a guardian, Jumi?" Nunuzac scolded. "You should know better than to make such a proposal. Esmeralda, I told you I would take you in until you had a chance to find a knight, since you can't run across one the regular way, but I guess I'll have to hang onto you a little longer."

"We're not _lovers_," Elazul protested, then suddenly showing the barest hint of a blush.

The pane of glass sighed. "That's not the point. Stop showing off, _boy_. That's not what a knight _is_. You're not some small-town sword-warrior, running around to help everyone."

"Hey!" Ariesa protested, gripping the handle of her own sword.

Nunuzac ignored the interjection. "You are dedicated to yourself, and one other. That is what the Jumi _are_, boy. Always in pairs, no more and no less; there cannot be two guardians any more than their can be two knights. Don't weaken the bond by trying to include another." Elazul straightened at that.

"Ariesa would make a good knight," piped up Lisa. All turned to look at her, Nunuzac swiveling slightly in midair. "She did it for Pearl before." Ariesa was tempted to protest that she wasn't a good knight at all, but it _was_ for Pearl, in a way. Elazul wouldn't willingly leave Pearl, of that she was certain, but whatever Nunuzac said, he would try to take on the protection of Esmeralda as well, unless she took that opportunity away from him.

The plate looked thoughtful. "Well, she's not Jumi, but temporarily... it's not a bad idea."

"Well, we should do it properly," Esmeralda replied. Turning to Ariesa, she put one hand to her collarbone. Ariesa, understanding, reached to touch Esmeralda's core...

She expected some of the same feeling that she had gotten from Pearl's core, but it felt _different_, like it had a personality all its own. The emerald core felt… confident, young, free, and energized. Then again, wasn't that reasonable, if the core was part of the being, that it should reflect that?

"Ariesa, will you accept knighthood until such time as we can find my sisters again?" the guardian intoned solemnly.

"I will," Ariesa said, a little taken aback by the vow.

Elazul suddenly looked at her with a trace of - could it be pride? "Well, Knight, I'll leave you two to look for her sisters together. I'm going to look around a bit myself." He turned abruptly and headed towards the exit of the library.

"Uh, goodbye?" Lisa called after him.

Ariesa and Esmeralda were left standing looking at each other. "Um, now what?"Ariesa asked.

"My sisters will be drawn to my core soon enough. Nunuzac and I have devised a spell that amplifies Mana. We just have to wander, and wait."

"Great. I can do that."

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Daena was feeling like a bit of an uncomfortable chaperone. No matter Bud's protests, he was absolutely besotted with Pearl, in the way that only a young man can be when he is just starting to notice women, but still didn't have a chance with them. And Pearl was just that sort of pretty, nonthreatening sort that filled a boy's dreams.

Pearl seemed to take it all in gentle stride, passing her time playing board games and cards with the young sorcerer. Either that, or she wasn't especially aware of the dynamics of men and women. Daena gave the two possibilities about a fifty-fifty chance.

Frankly, she didn't know quite what to make of Elazul's guardian. Pearl had taken her by surprise from the start; after hanging out with Elazul, she wasn't sure _what_ she had expected from his guardian, but it wasn't Pearl. Maybe somebody… more confident, able to take Elazul's mood swings in stride and match his driven dedication? She might have said _younger_ as well, if Pearl didn't look only eighteen or so herself. Still… there was something odd about her, that made it difficult for Daena to declare her age. It was kind of annoying.

It wasn't that she didn't like Pearl, not at all. It was just sometimes hard to find that tableau on which to forge connection.

"Bud, will you set the table, please?" she called out, as the resident voice of authority. Pearl was already getting things together.

The odd trio had adjusted rather well to each other's presence, and they laughed and talked comfortably. Bud was finally coaxed to talk about going to school in Geo, and his magical aspirations. Daena couldn't help but note that he had a somewhat – atypical – view of magic and how to use it. It wasn't that his ideas were bad, not at all, but they went rather against canon, and she supposed the teachers at the Geo Magic Academy hadn't taken well to them.

He was fascinated, however, with her stories of the school's history. "It's a thousand years old?"

"More or less," Daena told him. "It moved from Mindas in the early Fairie Wars, and when they ended, Ricrot, a lover of Anuella, officially founded it and the city of Geo."

"Sounds like a good guy," Bud said.

"That would be a matter of opinion," Daena said. "He fought with Anuella on the side of the fairies, and while the other side fought hard, even summoning Wyrms from the beyond, it was his forces that won the war for the fairies. But after," she continued, pausing for a sip of water, "the victory must have gone to his head, and he started forcing his beliefs on everyone through Geo and beyond. The Goddess worship of Gato was suppressed, and though the worst of the persecution happened long ago, Ricrot's empire did not truly loose their hold on Geo until Deathbringer's demise, a hundred years ago."

Bud pondered that.

"So, yes, Bud, the magic academy is that old. About as old as the Jumi." At the word, Pearl turned her head from where she had been gazing silently into the fire. "Why don't you tell us a story about the Jumi, Pearl?"

"Oh… Pearl trailed off. "Well, you see, I don't really know that much, and most of that is what Elazul told me. I mean, I know the basic history, and I know the Jumi city was taken over by the empire…"

"The Jumi City?" Daena asked. "I've never heard of it."

"That was sort of the point," Pearl said. "The Jumi needed a place to be together in a world without Mana. But even then, it wasn't enough, in the end." She suddenly looked terribly sad, and Bud gave her a spontaneous hug.

Daena pondered, thinking of Elazul as well as Pearl, both lost and unlucky souls, separated from their homeland. Pearl only turned back to the fire, deep in thought once again.

----------------------------------------

Nunuzac wished them well, and they walked out of the library past an old hag who cackled something in their general direction. Lisa sighed. "That's Thesenis. She thinks she's a witch of reincarnation, but mostly she's kind of annoying and no one can understand what she says."

"You sure have some interesting teachers here," murmured Ariesa, following Lisa out the door.

They were barely out of the library when Esmeralda perked up. "I sense something from that direction!"

"That's the principal's office," Lisa shuddered.

"Mephianse?" Esmeralda said. "It's so late in the day, he'll have been drinking in the outdoor fruit parlor for hours now. He's probably mumbling about his dead brother again."

Sure enough, the principal's office was empty, and unlocked. Esmeralda headed right to a drawer and pulled out a shining emerald core. She hugged it to her chest, laughing. "Does this make me a thief?"

"I don't think it counts if it's already yours," Lisa suggested.

Ariesa shuddered at the sight of the core, however. "Your sister?" she burst out. "So... she's..." She could not bring herself to say it.

Esmeralda hung her head. "When the Empire attacked the Jumi city, their cores were taken in the fight with Deathbringer. Mephianse probably ended up buying this one as just another piece for his collection of magic crap."

"So tragic to lose them that way," murmured Ariesa in sympathy, and suddenly she understood why Esmeralda might want to be a knight, to have a chance to fight back.

Esmeralda looked distant for a minute. "Someone wanted to insult me once, and he said emeralds are a fragile stone, and always have scratches," she replied. "But I think... if the four of us were together again... that's got to be good luck, right?" She swallowed. "Four emeralds, like a four-leaf clover."

Lisa looked misty-eyed. "Don't cry, Lisa," Ariesa reminded her. "Not for Jumi." Esmeralda nodded, and Lisa rubbed her face slightly.

Esmeralda fondled the core in her hands like a lost puppy, and they strode through town when she suddenly made a sharp right, leaving her knight and young companion to follow after her.

"That's the house of the richest lady in town," Lisa whispered to Ariesa. "Think she'll be happy with us barging in on her?"

Esmeralda didn't much care in her excitement, tearing in without so much as introducing herself. "Excuse me, have you seen something like this?" she asked the clearly wealthy woman, thrusting the first core before her.

The elegant lady peered at it intently. "Oh, there's one in the warehouse below. Feel free to take it. I have so many things in there I've forgotten I owned," she said, waving them towards a stairway.

Lisa lingered behind as Ariesa and her new guardian tore down the stairs eagerly. "Why did you let them have it?" asked the butler, leaning in to whisper to his mistress.

The woman's face grew hard. "A Jumi core will only bring you misfortune. Much better if they let themselves be crystallized, like the other one."

_The other one?_ How many Jumi _were_ there in this town? Lisa scurried to catch up with the other women.

----------------------------------------

"Ariesa! Esmeralda!" Lisa cried out. "The lady upstairs says there is a Jumi crystallized down here!"

Ariesa and Esmeralda stopped in their tracks, looking at each other and then back at Lisa. "Crystallized?" Ariesa asked.

"That statue?" Esmeralda walked up to a dusty stone statue of a beautiful woman across the storehouse. "Could it be... " One touch, and Ariesa saw her core begin to glow.

In a few moments, a core within the statue resonated as well, and it faded into a flesh-and-blood woman, perched on her pedestal like an object. A palely beautiful woman, in much the same way that Pearl was, though curled warm-brown hair was piled into an elaborate construction. Sadness crossed her face.

"Diana!" gasped Esmeralda. "Leader of the Jumi! I thought she was gone!"

The woman seemed untouched by Esmeralda's cry. "I was, once, but no longer," a deep, melodic voice intoned. "I am nothing now, since the Jumi are gone."

"Not yet," responded Esmeralda stubbornly.

Diana sighed. "It is only a matter of time, young guardian – Esmeralda, it was? I remember you now." Esmeralda flinched slightly at that. "You came to the city with your sisters, so full of hope, just in time for the city to be destroyed, so you of all people should know. The Jumi are doomed, and you will be, too, just like your sisters. You will be as well, if you persist in your foolish pride in being part of a dying race."

Esmeralda straightened. "Never! My sisters call me, and the others are the same! They're all waiting for tears of healing!"

Diana laughed. "Child, you cannot heal more than any other guardian. Listen, instead of arguing, since the energy from your core will only enable me to speak to you briefly. The last Jumi with the power to heal is dead, and without Florina, there is no way to bring us back… I had hoped… we could survive until…" Diana's expression grew faraway, then her face was wiped clean once again. "It matters not. It did not happen. We became nothing, and it is better we all die out, we can do nothing for this world but take. The jewel hunter will be coming here for me, soon enough, in any case."

"Why?!" Esmeralda demanded.

"She has plenty of reasons to hate me. If you insist, take your sister's core and leave this place! The jewel hunter will find you as soon as you have it. Perhaps you can find a place of safety, and if you still have hope, then you can live on as a Jumi. If not, hide who you are and become something else."

Esmeralda looked strangled as Diana slowly faded to gray. "I won't give up! The Jumi will cry again, and return! I believe it!" She crumpled to the ground. "I wish I could have more hope, but sometimes it's hard… You would think I could cry now, if ever..."

The scene jogged something in Ariesa's brain. Esmeralda's exuberance, her hope, next to Diana's desperation… it reminded her of Elazul and Rubens. "You're one of the younger ones, aren't you?" she asked the Jumi girl.

"I was," Esmeralda said mournfully. "Now maybe I'm just one of the last."

"Well, here's another," Lisa said brightly. While Esmeralda had been pleading with Diana, the elf-girl had been foraging in the mess, and now she held out a bright, shining stone to Esmeralda. A smile crossed a face that could have been called tearful, if there were any tears to be had.

"It's getting late," Ariesa observed. "As your knight, may I suggest you return to the inn with us, and we resume the search tomorrow?"

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Elazul ambled down one of the back alleys of Geo, thinking passingly of Esmeralda.

After encountering Rubens, he had for a while, despaired of finding others, at least others who cared, and he had questioned himself for a while. He wanted to find the rest – _why? For himself?_ Though it would be nice for him to know that lost part of himself, he had to be honest with himself, he was pretty much used to going it alone, or more accurately, only with Pearl. He hadn't felt like much before then. _For Pearl?_ He wanted her to have a home, wanted her to find her past, but that didn't seem like it either.

Most of the time, he felt like he was doing it, just because it was what he had always done. It had been what he was told to do, but he was unsure how much weight that really carried with him anymore.

But today… Esmeralda reminded him of something within himself. Hope, energy, life – things that the Jumi seemed to have lost, things they needed. It was a sharp contrast to Rubens' nonchalance, and it was rubbing off on him despite himself.

Despite his ruminations, his finally honed senses were taking it all in. The streets, the houses, the rooftops –

The rooftops.

If he hadn't been looking up there, he might have missed her. _Sandra_.

She knelt on one of the outcrops of the roof where the dome ceased to curve, peering out at the town beyond. If he had taken a right instead of a left at the last corner, she would be directly above him, and he might find a jewel hunter with her knife around his throat. He shuddered involuntarily at the thought.

Flattening himself against the wall, he crept stealthily until he was out of her view, then ran full speed towards the inn.

----------------------------------------

"Our room's just up the stairs," Lisa told Esmeralda. "Right this way - "

Esmeralda had stopped dead in the doorway, paying no attention.

"Esmeralda, what is it?" Ariesa asked, concerned.

Wordlessly, Esmeralda strode to the large plant in the middle of the room and dove her hands straight into the dirt. A moment later, her soil-covered hands came up, cupped inside them another large emerald, a perfect match to the others.

"That's it!" Esmeralda cried excitedly. "I don't know how it got here, but I don't care!"

Meanwhile, conversation had become a dull buzz as the cafe patrons turned to look at what the girl had been doing. Whispers circulated, and the word "thief" was heard once or twice.

Lisa crowded closer to Ariesa. "Uh-oh, somebody's going to get upset..."

Esmeralda gulped, finally looking around the room. "Um, this might be a good time for my knight to protect me..."

Ariesa looked around at the patrons and weighed her options, reaching down for sword hilt instinctively. Many were students, but there were many others, far too many for her to take them all on...

In a loud voice, she announced, "Esmeralda, I'm so glad that people here are so honest that they didn't steal the treasure we put there earlier! In fact, I'd like to buy everyone a round of drinks! And a 100-lucre tip for the barkeep!"

Cheers spread through the room, as Ariesa reluctantly pulled out her wallet. Glasses clinked, and she got a couple of high-fives from enthusiastic patrons as they headed towards the stairs.

"Well," Lisa said, "I guess that's one way to do it."

Entering the room, Esmeralda laid out the three emeralds on the table in the bedroom, caressing them lovingly. Those were not just stones to her, Ariesa realized; they were family.

"I can't stay now," she told the others, her eyes never leaving her treasures. "I have to get back to Nunuzac. Maybe we can try to bring them back tonight! I'm so excited, I won't be able to sleep!"

"Well, I'll take you back, then," Ariesa agreed, pleased to see her excitement. "Lisa, you'll be alright in the meantime?"

Lisa rolled her eyes. "_How _many times have I stayed at home alone? Believe me, I'll be fine."

----------------------------------------

Lisa leaned back on her bed contentedly. Ariesa meant well, but really, she worried way too much. There was no one here who was dangerous, and anyway, she was a _sorcerer_. She could handle herself.

She shut her eyes and let her thoughts wander. Thyme wasn't _that _bad looking, really, but...

The door flew open with a crash.

Lisa screamed, and grabbing her flute, ran to the corner, cowering as the dark shape drew near. "Stay back, or I'll call Salamando!" she cried, brandishing the instrument in what she hoped was a threatening manner.

"Lisa?" Elazul's voice reached her ears. "Why are you in the corner? And where are Ariesa and Esmeralda?"

Lisa stood, a bit embarrassed. "You _scared _me!" she cried, punching him, quite ineffectually considering how much smaller than he she was.

Elazul looked perplexed, not having a lot of experience dealing with agitated elf-girls. "Okay... um... let's just sit down maybe somewhere besides the floor and calm down, huh?"

Lisa was still sniffling from shock, but forced herself to calm. "Esmeralda found all the stones... cores, right? But she wanted to bring them to Nunuzac tonight and so Ariesa took her back to the academy..."

"Cores... so her sisters were... gone…" Elazul's face dropped. "I had hoped to find more Jumi, but... Anyway, so Esmeralda is out there with three additional cores, somewhere in the streets?" Lisa nodded.

Elazul straightened. "Grab that flute, Lisa. We have to go... now."

----------------------------------------

They caught up with Ariesa a block or so away from the Academy of Magic. "Ariesa!" Elazul called, out of breath.

"Elazul?" she asked calmly. "Back so soon?"

"Where... Esmeralda..."

"Back safe in the library with Nunuzac. Elazul, what's wrong?" From behind came a pattering as Lisa finally caught up.

"I saw Sandra," said Elazul, regaining breath, though his heart still raced, and from more than the run.

Ariesa needed no more explanation. "Oh my Goddess," she said, and wheeled to run back into the school. Elazul was only a handful of steps behind her, hoping Lisa would be able to keep up but not having the luxury of keeping an eye on her at the moment.

Elazul's eyes fell on Nunuzac as soon as he ran through the library door. But... no Esmeralda. "Where is she?"

"You're too late," the plate mourned. "She was hopping around here all agitated, trying to cry over those things, and then she decided to leave to go talk to someone, she said, someone who would know about tears. I tried to tell her not to go, but she wouldn't listen. I feel… worried… "

"Why would she leave without her knight?" Ariesa wondered, with a trace of worry in her own voice as well. Elazul knew, though. Esmeralda was probably too excited to be much thinking of her own safety. "Where did she go to? Any ideas?" he demanded of Nunuzac?

"Would Diana know?" asked Lisa, entering the library at the top of the stairs, just in time to catch the conversation.

"Diana?" asked Elazul, perplexed.

"Diana!" Ariesa exclaimed. "There's no time to explain, Elazul, but there's another Jumi core in this city - and I don't think Sandra would miss the chance to pick all up at once."

----------------------------------------

"That's terrible!" they heard Esmeralda's clear, soprano voice saying as they rushed down the stairs.

Elazul had taken the lead, and charged into the warehouse full speed just in time to see Esmeralda run further down. "A diamond Jumi?" he said in confusion, to the woman in white, standing rigidly on the pedestal.

"Indeed," the figure nodded. "I am the one who was once called Diana."

"That name I've heard," Elazul replied.

"Really?" Diana replied. "I have never seen you, young knight, but... the core hunter is near, I can sense her. My time is up, but Esmeralda should live still, she has much sparkle to her. Can you save her?"

"Of course!" Elazul replied hotly. "I'm a _knight_."

"Then, I leave it to you. Perhaps one day Mana will return, and she will cry again. The blessings of Mana be with you," she finished, as she faded back to cold stone again. Elazul did not waste another moment in following down the stairs, tearing down only faintly aware of the others behind him. But as the stairs opened up into a dark stone basement, a glimpse of fire-red hair told him he was already too late.

Sandra stood over a kneeling Esmeralda, who was squeezing her eyes shut as if she could force tears out of them. "Diana was right..." she whimpered. "It's useless! Jumi are useless! I can't shed tears, not even for my sisters!"

"What a clod," Sandra said dismissively, twirling one knife in her hand and clearly in no rush whatsoever.

"That's enough of that!" roared Elazul, and Sandra jumped in a most gratifying manner, suddenly distracted from the object of her attention.

"Jumi Knight. Late to help another guardian, I see?" she taunted him, that hateful evil smile crossing her face.

"Not too late," Elazul replied, pulling his sword. In the back of his head, he noted Ariesa some yards away at his right, and Lisa a short ways behind her.

Sandra didn't bother to answer, and Esmeralda didn't even have a chance to scream as her own core was torn out of her chest. She had just a few seconds to stare in shock, one hand reaching instinctively below her throat.

"No!" a small voice cried, and flames showered down. Elazul barely took in Lisa strumming on a small harp, and tackled Sandra to the ground.

She hit the floor with a grunt, but kept a death grip on the cores. She was quick, and strong, and before Elazul could get her pinned, she had wiggled out from under him and with an odd flip, knocked him flat on his back against the paving stones. He struggled slightly for breath as she stood.

"That hurt. I should teach you a lesson for that. But it doesn't matter, really," Sandra said, flashing four green cores. "I guess I'll have to grab Diana later." She made a mad dash for the exit, beating Ariesa to it with lightning quickness.

Ariesa dove into the passageway after her, only to return a moment later. "Elazul," she said reluctantly, "she's gone… I saw her disappear, in a flash of light, you know how she did at Gato?"

Elazul let his sword drop in frustration. "Another one lost."

Ariesa looked as distraught as he felt. "That's three... three we've tried to save... three gone..."

"The one in Polpota was already gone," Lisa reminded her gently.

"It's the principle," insisted Ariesa.

Elazul tuned them out as he walked back across to the stairs, climbing up to the storeroom that housed Diana. He placed his right hand against her still-glowing core, wondering if she could pull on any strength through it.

She could. She was much fainter than before, but it was enough, and her expression showed she already knew. "I'm sorry," was all he could say.

Her expression was kind, kinder than he would have expected from the famously hard-headed leader of the Jumi. "It is not your fault. I knew it would happen. I believe the jewel hunter wants to have revenge on all the Jumi."

"Revenge?" Elazul was startled. "For what?"

Diana ignored the question. "Who is your guardian, lapis knight?"

"Pearl."

"Pearl?" Her expression was wide-eyed, almost haunted, yet quizzical. "Your guardian? What does she look like?"

"White core, blond, hair, about this tall - " He motioned to just at the level of his core.

"I see," Diana interrupted, as if he had answered something. "Bring her with you, and Goddess willing I am still here to talk to you both then. Perhaps with guardian and knight together, I can do some good." And she faded away.

Perhaps she meant that to be hopeful, but Elazul felt more depressed than ever. He walked back up the stairs and out of the mansion with a heavy heart, the footsteps of the women behind him giving him no comfort.

----------------------------------------

Elazul sat on the balcony of their room back at the inn, his legs propped up on the railing as he gazed over the city skyline. The night was almost dark, the only moons out being the small, angry red moon of Salamando and the smaller, twinkling one of Dryad. It suited his mood, really, and the streetlights and the trickles of conversation that drifted up from underneath them barely interrupted his thoughts.

The women had long since fallen asleep in the bed they shared, though Ariesa occasionally tossed and muttered. His own bed was empty, though ruffled up from his futile attempts to get some sort of rest, before he came outside to worry instead.

He was so engrossed in his despairing thoughts that he didn't even hear her come up, only realizing she was there when she slid her palms over his shoulders to clasp them together just over his core. He almost jumped at that, but he turned his head to find she wasn't even looking at him, staring somewhere out over the rooftops. She probably had no idea what that did to him. Her golden hair, loose from her hairsticks and uncombed as she had just woken up, tickled his shoulder.

"Can't sleep either?" he asked.

"Not well. What are you thinking about, out here all night?"

"What you said. Three dead Jumi." Elazul tensed, and forced himself to sink into the sensations his core received from her touch, trying to distract himself before he got worked up about Jumi all over again. It helped, for a minute.

"I look everywhere, with Pearl, without her, for more Jumi, and all I find are dead ones," he told her morbidly. "I guess I should be grateful at least I have her still."

To her credit, Ariesa did not insult him with some banally cheerful answer, merely looked into his eyes gravely. It was that same look he had seen on her the first day he saw her in Domina. He had thought that day that she was just an average warrior in a little backwater town; actually, he hadn't thought much of her at all, figuring he would be gone from Domina soon enough. Even after she helped save Pearl, he thought of her as someone who had helped him for a minute, nothing more; no one wanted to stick around Jumi very long, if they were smart.

But paths and choices had led her a different way – led them both, really – and now, he saw in those brown eyes so much more, the same depth you could find in a Jumi core if you knew how to read one.

And those eyes were troubled now.

"I'm a terrible knight," Ariesa berated herself.

That surprised Elazul. "If you're beating up on yourself, you're a pretty damn good knight."

"I lost her," Ariesa said mournfully. "I was supposed to defend her to the death, right? That's what your promise to Pearl is?"

"You would have put your life before hers. I think maybe she wasn't a very good guardian. She should have stepped back and let you protect her, instead of barreling ahead so mindlessly. Even Pearl knows better."

Ariesa was not consoled entirely, though, staring across the moonlight town.

"You know not to cry, right?" Elazul ventured.

"Yes," she murmured, leaning over the back of Elazul's chair, "but if you won't let me cry, you owe me a hug instead." Tentatively, he turned his upper body slightly and reached out to wrap his left arm around her back.

Ariesa wiggled into his awkward one-armed embrace, leaning forward slightly to rest her head on the top of his. She felt rather nice, actually. At least she wasn't touching his core anymore, Elazul thought; that was starting to drive him right out of his head. She rested there for a moment before lifting her head to speak. "Maybe the two of us saw another Jumi die," she began, looking at him pointedly. "but at least this Jumi is still alive."

He leaned in ever so closer to her, and her look became a bit pensive. He could feel her breath on his face now, but abruptly he sat back, pulling his arm out from behind her. Instead, he only reached up to cover her hands with his own, giving a quick, affectionate squeeze. "You're tired," he told her. She didn't argue, only nodded, and went back inside with a final touch of his shoulder.

The rustling of sheets indicated she had returned to bed, but he sat, the twin pulses of core and heart beating rapidly in tandem. It was only play, of course. He knew he would never let himself fall for anyone not Jumi; he didn't think he would ever find anyone worth taking that risk for. Especially when it meant not the ordinary emotional risk of love, but a honest-to-Goddess danger to the person of anyone who cried for the Jumi. He had faced that choice once before, and walked away.

_One more thing to think about_, he thought. At least it was more pleasant than the rest.

----------------------------------------

Despite all that had happened, Lisa was a little sorry to be leaving Geo. It had brought up a lot of good memories. Still, she knew that both Elazul and Ariesa couldn't wait to leave the city behind, and would have been gone already had they not had to make a last stop at the magic academy, to relate the sad news to Nunuzac.

The odd professor did not seem entirely surprised. "I knew it would probably happen, sooner or later. This many cores in one place... I had hoped, but really could they fail to attract the jewel hunter? Not if she's as good as I've heard."

"What do you know about the Sword of Mana?" Elazul asked suddenly, sharply.

"You seek it, Jumi?" Nunuzac asked, surprised. "It is the way to the Goddess, a key of Mana. I know little, but your core could lead you to it, if that is what you really want. Are you sure you want something of that power, seeing how your kind has been hunted for only the Mana in their cores?"

Elazul shifted uncomfortably.

Nunuzac paused, and the glass plate seemed to waver slightly, sadly. "I've done many bad things in my time in search of that kind of power… Summoning monsters from beyond, unleashing horrors that could destroy the world, leaving me in this bizarre shape. Summoners never really survive their art, you know. It makes me wonder if the tree has ever led to any true good… I have seen little evidence of it in my time. Blood is shed in desperation, by myself and others, to get the power that the Goddess once gave us for free, all the way to Deathbringer, who they say searches for it from the grave… It makes me wonder if, despite what the Wisdoms say, we would be better off without it. The tranquility of one's soul is not to desire anything."

"But the Goddess wants us to desire, to need, to love," Ariesa said softly, and Elazul looked at her peculiarly, considering. "If we want nothing, why does the world exist at all? Matilda never let go of her wanting. She knew it was what we were meant to do."

Nunuzac only laughed. "If only that were a good thing. I had hoped... My dirty little secret is, long ago, I used to seek out Jumi cores as much as any other mage. They were right down the street, at the jewelry shop. If only I had known then what I knew now..." Elazul stiffened, and Nunuzac paused as he regained himself. "Well, I thought perhaps helping Esmeralda would cancel it out, but it seems only the Goddess can cancel my debt."

Lisa reached one hand out to stroke the glass in a comforting gesture. She was sure he couldn't feel it, but he smiled nonetheless. "Thank you, little one. Go on, now. You are still young enough to make a difference."

----------------------------------------

It was an emotionally worn out party who returned home late in the evening, several days later.

Together, they stepped across the threshold of the house. Lisa gently nudged her brother awake where he and Pearl had fallen asleep on comfy pillows in front of the fireplace.

Daena sat at the table, reading another of the history books from Ariesa's library. She looked up as they entered, but caught the mood quick enough, and patiently waited. Ariesa felt bad for her lack of enthusiastic greeting, but she was exhausted, and there would be time enough to fill her in later.

Elazul bundled up Pearl to rearrange her more comfortably on the couch, lifting the small woman as easily as he might scoop up one of the twins. "Elazul..." she said, eyes briefly fluttering. "This house is so nice..."

He tucked the blankets around her and straightened. Ariesa joined by his side to look down at the girl, who had sunk quickly back into sleep, a peaceful smile on her face.

"Are you going to tell her about...." No need to fill in the rest.

"Not just yet," Elazul replied. "How can I, when she looks so happy?"


	25. Secrets: Sky

**Author's note: **Phew! Finally ready for posting. The next few chapters are rather critical, so they took a little extra time to get it together and edit. It was like giving birth, or pulling teeth, or… something. It took work.

The next handful of updates may be a little slower… say two, maybe even three weeks. The reason is… the chapters are getting more complex, and even I'M getting lost in what's going on. So I practically have to reread the entire thing with every posting, and that takes some time.

Onward!

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**25: Secrets: Sky**

"What are you up to today?" Hawk asked.

Lise didn't turn around from where she was brushing her hair in the mirror. No braid today, she was doing queenly things, not Amazon things. She wore a silk dress, simple yet elegant, in the classic Rolantic style, and twin gold bracelets curled around her wrists and up her forearms. She could see him looking at her in the reflection, just _looking_ in that way of his that still was able to touch her after all this time.

"I'm taking the girls to the prayer room. Coming?" she asked, as if she did not know the answer.

"No," Hawk replied. He never did; he didn't see the point, with no Goddess to pray to, and Lise couldn't make him feel what centuries of Rolantic tradition had bred into her bones. "I'm going to play some cards with the baby here - " he said, motioning to their youngest daughter, impatiently waiting at the table.

"Father!" Alluma protested.

"No such luck," Hawk teased. "Twelve years old or not, you're still the baby until someone in this family has a kid." Alluma gave him a huffy look.

Lise only smiled. This was a familiar refrain for her. Hawk would never admit to having a favorite child, and certainly he loved all their daughters equally, but the simple fact was, Alluma was too much like him. Aliota, eighteen, had been preparing to take over as queen since birth, practically, much like Lise herself had. Fortunately, unlike her mother, she wouldn't have to for some years yet. Jelissa, fifteen, was somewhat reserved and dark, emulating her older sister's pride but not her personality. She would make a great Amazon warrior.

But Alluma... hadn't inherited anything from her, as far as she could tell, except her golden hair. She was fickle; sometimes energetic, sometimes reserved, and endlessly restless. Some thought she was flippant, but she had a depth that became apparent once one knew her better. Lise, frankly, had no idea where she would go in life, or even if she would choose to stay in Rolante.

Primping done, she gave her daughter a hug and her husband a kiss, and glided serenely out the door of the royal bedroom.

Aliota awaited her in the corridor, wearing a light blue silk dress and pale blond hair neatly combed in a sharp contrast to Jelissa's silvery-lavender hair, slightly disarrayed as she ran to meet her mother and sister. "Sorry I'm late, Mother," she replied.

Lise didn't scold her. She knew Jelissa had been at practice, even if the short Amazon skirt she wore didn't give it away, and she lost all track of time while she was there. She slowly began to walk down to the castle corridors, flanked by her daughters, who chattered together happily.

They stopped at the door to the prayer room, Jelissa leaning her spear against the wall and unbuckling the belt that held the sword she was nearly as proficient with. It was the Forcenan influence; Jelissa insisted they should know both, because who knew when one or the other might come in handy?

Lise, Queen of Rolante, entered the prayer room first, the Princesses following behind respectfully.

The windows were open, the wind whistling from one side of the room to the other. They were always open, even in a storm; it was thought that if it rained in this room, it was because the Goddess wished it so.

Sadly, Lise stopped to contemplate the sad truth. There was no Goddess, and there would not be for some time yet. But the traditions remained, providing some sort of continuity for the transition.

An odd golden ball sat in the corner, not metal, something like a seed – an extremely large one. Lise wondered why Angela kept sending her artifacts. Angela hoped that these could be used somehow to find whatever Mana energy was left in the world, to concentrate it, to create whatever iota of magic could be found; but all of Lise's shaking and rattling of the items had convinced her that Valda's assessment was correct, that was not possible.

In fact, she couldn't sense what Angela could sense at all. At one time, she had been able to do some magic of her own, but it wasn't exactly the same as what Angela did, and she concluded, reluctantly, that she would never have the same sort of sense of Mana that apparently being born Altenan granted.

The Amazon way was different. Mana or not, they were there for the Goddess, past, present, or future. They fought for Her justice.

Her daughters knelt with her to murmur the prayers to Jinn, to the wind, to Goddess old and new, then standing as they completed. "Coming, Mother?" Aliota whispered, keeping her voice low out of respect.

"No," Lise replied equally quietly, standing to her own feet. "I think I'll stay for a little while." Aliota nodded, and she and Jelissa left Lise to her own thoughts.

With the two young women gone, Lise was left with only the sound of the wind to keep her company. She was not lonely, however. Lise had always loved the sound of the wind, part of her Rolante heritage; and if one listened correctly, the wind could tell of a great many things. Today, it sounded… curious.

She walked over and bent down to pick up the golden seed. Mana or not, it did have a nice feeling to it – of creation, or rebirth. If it was a seed, was it supposed to grow something? Not the Mana Tree. That tree grew from fairies, not big gold seeds.

It was a subtle change in the pitch of the wind that drew her attention. Still holding her treasure, she approached the west window, the direction from which the wind came today. The direction of sunset rather than sunrise. Wind was invisible, naturally, but as she watched, it seemed to coalesce, swirls and eddies combining. She blinked to clear her eyes, but sure enough, a figure was forming – and not one she had expected to see again.

"Marduk," she greeted the angelic being. "I haven't seen you since the Goddess died. How is it you are here?"

"How much you forget, Amazon Queen. I am only another form of the Goddess. I am Her," said the rather distinctly male figure. "Past, present, future, it does not matter."

Lise had a hundred questions to ask, but politely waited.

"Time is not so linear as you may think, not from the dimension where I stand," Marduk told her, the voice rising in pitch to become almost feminine, then descending back to a deep baritone. "Neither is it completely malleable, but there can be some... twisting… involved. I am gone, in all of my forms, but my… shades… are still accessible, in a way. Perhaps your shade will be able to step outside its own time as well. Carlie, I'm sure, could explain it better for you." The Goddess stopped and mused. "Shade. How appropriate. Such a misunderstood Elemental, its chaos difficult for lifeforms to understand, the more so the more intelligent they become, and the more it frightens them. It was a pity I could not make beings who could understand and endure darkness better."

"There is always light within the darkness," Lise answered.

Marduk, the Goddess, gazed down, speculating. Had Her eyes not been covered by a golden helm, Lise suspected she would have been afraid to meet them. "You are one of the few left who are able to understand, because you were able to receive my Gift, that which you sometimes call the 'class change'. But soon enough, that knowledge will be gone as well."

Something in Her voice gave Lise chills. "Whatever do you mean?" She unconsciously found herself caressing the smooth surface of the seed, perhaps for comfort.

He motioned to the air around, and the mountains below. "Mana, my power, still rests in the world, but hidden, waiting; the Elementals hide, with little of it to cling to. It will build, with time, but until then… there is little protection from those who wish to destroy it. Creation, destruction, both necessary parts of the whole, a needed balance, but a difficult one. The sparkle of Mana, splintered into a sky of dust, and who will be left to pull it together again? Who will be around to remember the secret of Mana? It will be only a legend by then."

Practicality switched over. "What are we facing, then? Decline? War? Death?"

"Perhaps nothing more than change," Marduk told her. "That may be the most frightening of all. But do not forget, the demons are still there. They are formed of chaos and destructive energy themselves, and therefore, by definition, cannot be destroyed in the normal ways."

"Could they return?" Lise gasped. "The Archdemon, the Dragon Emperor?"

"The Archdemon was a construct, not a being, and that construct was shattered by you and Angela," She told Lise. "That construct cannot arise again, not in that same way, though other constructs make arise. The Dragon Emperor… was a being, if a corrupted one. Even I do not have an answer, I can no longer see the world clearly enough."

Lise's Amazon bravery took over. "So what do we do? Without Mana?"

"There is one thing. Humans may not be able to control Mana any longer, but as long as there is life, it is there, and you are connected to it. The Goddess is both the source of Mana, and its product."

"That doesn't make sense," Lise protested. "I don't understand."

"It doesn't make sense in your dimension. You cannot understand the higher dimensions, so you will have to believe." Marduk paused. "There are a hundred types of balances, dualities that both oppose and complement to keep the world in place. And the dichotomy of Life and Mana, the Goddess and her power, is the most precious and harmonious of all. It is the difference between you reaching out to the Goddess for her power to enter you, and merely standing back and choosing to receive her."

"So you are saying that it is always a balance?"

"Always. The truth of the Goddess is that her plan, her balance, can never be know fully, but simple knowledge of such a truth is to make oneself part of Mana. Normally the actions of humans would not have the power to disrupt Mana so, but she is young, and unformed, and vulnerable as she grows."

"That makes me afraid," admitted Lise.

"Perhaps you should be. Fear is a great motivator, and that is why some seek to take advantage, and it is this dark side of the Goddess that leads them to fight, to make war. Others still are tied to Mana itself and powers, as the Jumi are, but some – like you – are tied to the Goddess, and she will seek you, she needs you."

Lise turned her head to look towards the east window. The window of sunrise, of new beginnings. "Goddess, allow us to be part of you still," she prayed in a whisper, before returning attention to her divine guest.

Marduk seemed pleased to hear her prayer. "That you will be. Ancient Goddess or new, it does not matter, but you will need time to truly understand. Learn it, Amazon queen. The connection will serve you well." And Marduk disappeared.


	26. Legends: Stars

**26: Legends: Stars**

Ariesa found herself steering clear of Elazul and Pearl for a few days. She didn't have any particular reason for not seeing Elazul; it was just that she needed a bit of personal space after the intensity of the trip to Geo. They both did.

She could see him whenever she chose to, anyway. They had finally rented one of the houses in the middle of town; Ariesa doubted Pearl wanted to move back out of her own comfortable house back into a cramped room at the inn, with an odd giant canary of an innkeeper fussing over her egg and generally driving them crazy. Ariesa thought Elazul must enjoy it too; it was just up the street from the pub. From what she heard, she could find him there more often than at home.

"He'll get over it," Daena put in her two cents, washing dishes at home one day. "Give him another few days, and if you haven't heard from him, then stop by." She herself was getting restless, and started talking about going back to Gato.

Daena leaving for Gato... Elazul and Pearl probably would probably leave again too, despite having rented the house.... Ariesa suddenly felt very lonely. She had lived in her familiar house by herself for so long, but she had become accustomed to her little family.

At least she would still have the twins. They were certainly starting to occupy her time. She had come back from Geo determined not to keep slacking off on her responsibilities to them. So far, all she could teach them was some rudimentary fighting skills – they didn't use real weapons, she used a blunt staff, Lisa a broom, and Bud a frying pan, of all things.

Of course, she couldn't teach them anything of magic, but Daena had stepped in there. Daena wasn't a magic user, but apparently had some aptitude for it, though she had said she had little inclination to study it. Ariesa had already seen that, in the trip to Leires. On top of that, her life in Gato had given her an education in the rudiments and beyond, and one day, Daena took the staff, using it as a teaching utensil to walk the twins through some spells. Ariesa, at that point, was glad for the break.

Today, they both were enjoying some peace and quiet since the twins had gone exploring for the day. Ariesa was doing absolutely nothing with the time, remaining sulky on the couch, and wondering how many days she had to wait before she stopped by to see Elazul. He could be irritating sometimes, but she was getting used to having the guy around.

Daena sensed her mournful mood. "Get off the couch, you."

"I don't want to," Ariesa whined.

Daena leaned over the sofa's back to look down at her. "I'm the one who likes to do what's best for her friends, whether they like it or not, remember?" she said brusquely. "Let's go for a walk. We'll go pick some diceberries or something."

She grabbed Ariesa's hand, and Ariesa reluctantly let her best friend pull her to a stand. Together, they started packing for the day's trip. As she placed some bread and honey-onion spread in her satchel, something in what Daena had said jogged her memory. "Do you miss Matilda? Would you have done anything different? Would you have still tried to help her?"

Daena froze slightly before answering. "Yes. No. I don't know. I was thinking of going to talk to Gaeus to talk about it, you know? I went to ask him before what to do about Matilda."

"What did he say?" Ariesa wondered, suddenly full of compassion.

"He said to let her do what she wants." Daena snorted. "I told him I would try to think about it calmly, but I couldn't accept it. Then again, now that I see how things ended, I see what he was trying to tell me, because my trying to change her didn't do a thing anyway. People have to find the power to change themselves."

She paused for another long moment. "It's the truth, but I think… sometimes, the truth only makes you suffer more."

"Elazul," Ariesa said suddenly. "He keeps looking for Jumi, and he keeps seeing them lost… Maybe he would have been better off never trying? I hate to think that, but every Jumi he finds dead, it seems like part of his heart, or his core or whatever, dies a little with them. What if… perhaps the Jumi are dying, and if so, I can't imagine how the realization would hurt him."

Daena had no answer. They stepped out of the house now both in pensive moods.

Not that they got far. A short walk down the path, Elazul was struggling to get past the Sproutling, who was skipping around, jabbering nonsense at a Knight who was clearly in no mood for it.

"Elazul!" Ariesa exclaimed, right on the heels of her previous worry. "Where's Pearl?"

"You don't know?!" he reacted with panic. "That means she's not here! I could have sworn her core was leading me straight to her house!"

"Relax, Elazul, she probably wandered off somewhere nearby," Daena spoke soothingly.

"No," he replied. "I don't get that feeling at all from her core... she's too sharp, too aware, and worried, not at all like when she wanders off... What if she's been taken somewhere?"

"The jewel hunter?" Ariesa gasped.

Elazul slumped against the mailbox, his agitated energy and adrenaline wearing off. "Sandra... she could have traced us back here from Geo... I thought Domina, at least, was safe…" Daena now looked apprehensive as well.

"Maybe if we all spread out?" Ariesa suggested. "We could all help look for her."

It took a few minutes for them to squeeze all the relevant information out of Elazul - where he had last seen her, what she had been doing - and in the meantime, the twins strolled up from wherever they had meandered off to. They seemed surprised by all the agitation among the adults.

"Hiya, Elazul," Lisa greeted him. "I don't think Pearl is coming back quite yet, maybe you should meet up with her later?"

Elazul froze. "Back? What do you mean?"

Bud caught his worry. "We _saw _her, heading down towards the Mekiv Caverns. You didn't know? I saw some lady following her, I thought maybe she was meeting a friend or something."

"A tall lady with red hair?" Elazul asked. Bud nodded, and Elazul groaned.

Lisa wheeled on her brother. "You didn't tell me that part," she accused.

Bud was suddenly on the defensive. "I didn't think it was important! What could happen to Pearl, this close to Domina?"

Elazul wasn't even listening, and was already halfway down the hill towards the caverns than Ariesa had shown him so long ago. Ariesa went running after him.

She grabbed his shoulders and he wheeled around, expressionless. "Stop and think, Elazul," she scolded. "You could be heading into a trap, or worse."

Elazul looked thoughtful at that, and nodded. "I would be grateful for the help," he told her, slipping into the polite, reserved mode he always attained when he worried about Pearl. It made her feel as if there was a distance between them. "But we have to leave now. After what happened to Esmeralda, if that is Sandra trailing her… I don't want Pearl with that woman a minute longer than necessary."

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Pearl crept over the rocks that partially obscured the entrance to the Mekiv caverns. She couldn't explain it, exactly, just that something was calling her, like at the tower of Leires – she didn't know why, both places felt somehow familiar to her, but in different ways. Leires felt… like a part of herself was there, like there were answers, there.

Mekiv felt different. Mekiv felt like… home. It was a feeling she couldn't remember experiencing before, but she knew what it was, nevertheless, as she traversed the first cavern, captivated by the softly glowing walls.

Ariesa had told her the stories about the caverns, about how they were said to have a life of their own from the ancient, broken Mana stone, about how Ariesa loved them because they represented creation. It wasn't surprising, Pearl could feel the Mana permeating throughout, not so terribly potent in any one spot, but a diffuse sensation, like a soft blanket of sparkling comfort.

A sproutling ambled through the cavern she had entered, talking at first to itself in its odd singsong voice, then turning to her. "I like drinking water," it told her, with absolute seriousness on its pale, doll-like face. "I like the ground. I like stepping on leaves…" It descended into random muttering.

Most thought the things talked nonsense, but Pearl knew. It was talking about the simple value of life itself.

Abruptly she remembered. She had that feeling of Mana surrounding her when she had come here the first time. Elazul had been so angry that day, so worried that he couldn't find her, and so baffled about what she was even doing there. And Pearl had been so confused _herself_, not remembering how, or why, she was there. But now… it was different since the Tower of Leires.

She recalled what had happened there, and what had not. She had not gotten the answers she so desperately craved. But something… something had changed nevertheless. She didn't think Elazul could tell the difference, he was so used to her being a certain way, but she was… sharper, more aware, and things seemed to want to trickle up, to be remembered, though she couldn't grasp them yet.

She reached the end of the room, stepping through a very low opening and crossing into another cavern, this one larger, and darker, than before. Pearl barely noticed.

Elazul had changed, too. That was another thing that was different now, both he and Ariesa. Elazul at first seemed dismissive of her; perhaps it was worries over she herself, perhaps it was – that time in Granz? To Pearl, however, something about Ariesa had seemed warm, familiar. Elazul had barely given her a second thought, but Pearl felt like she was someone who she wanted to keep around, and it was for her sake, really, that the friendship had begun.

Perhaps they all had changed. She hadn't seen much of Ariesa since she left her house to settle into her new home in Domina with Elazul – just an occasional quick run-in in the marketplace – but something subtly had changed between those two. Then again, in the past month or so, Ariesa had spent more time with Elazul than she herself had. She wasn't sure what it was – had he changed more, or she? – but there was something that made her – kind of happy, kind of sad at the same time.

Pearl realized with a start, that she had wandered into a dead end without even realizing it. She stopped to gauge her surroundings. The rocks here were even more evolved than the rest, stalactites hanging from the ceiling in delicate shapes sculpted by time and Mana, tapering to a gentle point. Pearl stared up at one of those points, her gaze focusing on it.

"Hello, Pearl," a voice broke into her thoughts.

She barely had time to turn around before quick hands grabbed her by the shoulders, and pushed her against the wall.

----------------------------------------

The stone caverns were the same as they ever were, but traveling through, following Elazul's guidance, Ariesa couldn't shake the potent feeling of foreboding. It seemed more than a simple déjà vu.

Elazul strode forward decisively, a man on a mission, and Ariesa hurried to catch up as Daena and the twins fell behind. It was obvious it was something beyond simple concern for her safety driving him… perhaps not the same odd thing she was feeling, but if he was getting some strange sensation through his bond to Pearl, then… something definitely wasn't right.

He stumbled suddenly, and instinctively she reached out a hand before he righted himself. He looked around in confusion. "I lost the feeling of her… My core... " Elazul bemoaned, reaching a hand up to the gem at his chest. "Something in the way… clouded, dark… Pearl... where could she be?"

"An innocent-looking girl?" rasped a voice.

There, almost invisible against the wall, stood a stooped old man, who looked to be hundreds of years old. His appearance was absolutely repulsive, flesh and face mottled with scars, growths and pits as if something had been eating away at it; Ariesa was only thankful his cloak, a muddy brown-gray, did not show more. Wiry, greasy hair gray sprouted from his chin more than his head. His eyes had the cloudy cover that usually meant blindness, but they were directed towards the two clearly enough, as he stepped forward into the light.

The ordinarily comforting green light of Mekiv seemed… buzzing, agitated at his presence, and Ariesa hoped that was just her imagination running away with her as she shrank back instinctively. Daena entered with twins in tow, and Ariesa hurriedly gestured them to go no further.

Elazul, however, approached the creature, panic starting to make him irrational. "Who are you? What do you know about it? Is Sandra here?"

"I saw the stone," the geezer intoned, half-dazed. "A smooth white stone, giving off beautiful light… She went that way." He gestured towards a path curving left and slightly up. Elazul was running almost before he finished speaking.

The twins tore after him, followed by Daena, but as Ariesa stepped forward, the man said, "You. Wait."

She froze. "What?"

He took a few hobbling steps toward her, and Ariesa shrank back, but he went no further. Instead, he smiled, an expression perhaps meant to be reassuring, but only creepy in that ancient, destroyed visage. "You know that if you cry for him you will turn to stone."

She tossed her hair. "I've heard."

"But you don't think about _why_. This is to forbid contact between the Jumi and others."

"The Jumi have been isolated for long enough. I'm not afraid."

"You aren't?" he asked her. "The Jumi. Beautiful things, pure Mana in a world without, full of the sparkle of life, like the stars in the night sky… You have no idea, do you?" he said, laughing, a rasping, grating sound. "I've seen those stars, at the edge of the universe. Nothing else in this world can compare, and if humans knew that beauty, they would go mad with desire. It happens already, you see? You've seen Jumi die so someone else can have that beauty."

"It's not right," she protested, wondering why she had not left yet, but perhaps simple morbid curiosity kept her in place.

The man continued, ignoring her. "The Jumi are no better. They take from those who cry for them, turning them to stone. They are only truly beautiful when they are nothing but their core." A light something like desire lit up those clouded eyes. "Jewels that sparkle… Is there anyone in this world who hates what is beautiful? Perhaps they do, they hate the drive that compels them to desire. Humans compete, fight, even kill just to get beauty. You're a pretty thing, perhaps someone would compete for you kill for you?"

Ariesa felt overtly repulsed at his comment, and he leaned in, as if to drive the point further into her. "And the greater the beauty, the more it is vied for, and the more hurt happens because of it. Such tragedy... Like Mana itself, more precious the less there is."

"I've heard enough," said Ariesa, disgusted, but the voice followed her out of the cavern.

"Someday, I see, you will cry for him... and that will be the end..."

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"We must be getting close, Elazul."

Elazul brushed off Daena's reassurance. "I have a bad feeling about this..."

He didn't think they _could_ get much further into the caverns; though pockets of light showed they were still near the surface, the exit was far back, and no other passages branched off the path they followed. He took stock of his companions, feeling a sudden sense of relief as Ariesa stepped in from the chamber before.

Relief was short-lived, and quickly overcome when he rounded another corner to find Pearl... and Sandra.

Sandra towered over Elazul's diminutive guardian. One hand held his guardian against the wall, and when Pearl wriggled the slightest bit, her captor neatly responded, making a quick escape impossible, and leaving his guardian with no choice but to stay and listen. "Well? What have you remembered? Do you know your origin, your true purpose?" Sandra was saying.

Elazul braced. The example of Rubens had taught them that getting to close to a jewel hunter with a knife did not pay. Cautiously, he bided his time.

Pearl, for her part, had very little shyness around her now. "How many times are you going to ask me?" she demanded, her voice echoing off the cavern walls. "I have no idea what you're talking about!"

"Huh. I thought you would have figured it out at Leires. You must be pretty stupid in this form. I figured it out the first time I saw you, the first time I came here. Of course I was hunting _him_ at the time," she said, gesturing with a thumb towards the shadows where Elazul waited. "His core's so immature, it's much easier to follow."

Elazul bristled at the insult, and realized, as he had seen at Gato, how easily Sandra could locate him. His cover blown, he stepped forward, sword in hand, and relief lit Pearl's face. "Elazul!" she cried.

He felt nothing but malice for the woman at Pearl's side, and he'd be damned if he would let her slice Pearl's core out the way she had Rubens' and Esmeralda's. Caution gave way to anger as he strode forward. "Get away from Pearl! Hand her over now!" he yelled, sword brandishing.

Sandra only scoffed. "Do I look like a woman who would listen to you?"

Probably not, and he hadn't really expected her to, but her taunting gave him a moment to think. Thought would not cooperate, though, and instead Elazul felt anger taking him over. He knew it clouded his judgment, but he welcomed it nevertheless, letting it fill him, surging through core and back in a snowballing loop. Vaguely, he noted the others by his side, but his attention was all forward.

"I'll make you listen with this sword!" And he charged.

The jewel hunter barely blinked an eye. Rage-blind, he raised his sword with both hands, preparing for a mighty blow, and remembering too late that left his core exposed.

Sandra hadn't forgotten, and with a quick motion, threw an object at him. It caught the green light of Mekiv, the light of life, and some removed part of him noted the irony at that, as the knife struck true.

_Her aim is good_, he thought for a split second. Then the world exploded in pain as the peaceful beating of his core exploded into a million white-hot knives piercing every inch of his body, and his legs gave way under him, him barely feeling the bruises as he crashed to the ground. There was nothing outside that sensation, nothing around him, nothing but the pain, as he found himself gasping for air. He heard screams, from Ariesa, from Pearl, from himself.

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Pearl knelt over her injured knight, Ariesa mirroring her across his shaking body. Their eyes met, both full of fear, but neither able to cry. One couldn't, and one wouldn't.

Daena dashed across the cavern, flail cracking in the air, but Sandra dodged her strokes with amazing quickness, taunting all the while. "Pearl... your dear Elazul's core is scratched! What now, my pretty? Will you not save your knight with tears of compassion?" Pearl ignored her, her mind focusing on Elazul, trying to will the guardian's tears into being. Still, they would not come.

"Don't listen to her," Elazul squeezed out. He was still in tremendous pain, but at least consciousness had somewhat returned.

"I know," Pearl whispered. She ran one finger across the angry-looking crack across the lapis embedded in his chest, smaller fissures splintering out from it, making it look as if the slightest touch would shatter it to pieces. Elazul's flinch was enough to tell her it ran deep, but she pulled back to place her palm fully against it instead.

_The crack… _it made her remember_… _something_… there was a desert…_

Her touch gave her the full sense of his core, of his being, and Pearl started, almost overwhelmed with what flooded into her. Pain, yes, but fading some in the face of other emotions as his body made accommodation to the hurt, and bubbling in came a crazy collage of fear, worry, anger, passion, love, and above it all, an overwhelming sense of self, of him and her, of his need to be something, to be joined to… not even her, she thought, just a need for something _outside_ of himself, perhaps the same need that drove every living thing. She wanted to call it love… but that was just another emotion, far too simple. It wasn't love, it was life. It was Mana, and Goddess or not, it was there.

It suddenly made her feel angrier than she could ever remember being.

"Sandra, stop that. it's pointless to harm the very things we seek." Pearl looked up at the scratchy voice. She knew him. He had been there when Sandra had grabbed her to drag her into the depths of this cavern, she not having the strength to resist.

The anger grew, and she turned it on herself, suddenly livid at her frailty, her uselessness, now, when she was supposed to be a guardian in truth. _The guardian of Mana, keepers of the flow of Mana itself, _came the words from someplace she could not remember, but it didn't matter if someone, some part of Mana, was dying before her. She was meant to give life, but she couldn't cry... what excuse for a guardian, was she, anyway?

Sandra echoed her thoughts, somehow skipping around Daena's attacks without losing breath. "Why do you not cry? I cannot stand you, girl, and all of the Jumi. Useless dirt, where once there was the sparkle of life. Answer me, Pearl! Where are the tears?!" Daena's rapid breaths showed the strain she was under, chasing after her skilled adversary.

Pearl called back, and even to herself, her voice sounded weak, ineffectual. "No matter how sad... I cannot shed tears. we can't cry! You know this, Alexandra!" _Who?_ she asked herself. _Now where had that come from?_

Sandra suddenly recoiled, a spark of fear crossing her face. "What..." Daena's flail scored a clean hit on her abdomen, and she doubled over, but the pain brought her back to reality quickly enough. "You are incapable of healing!" she shouted, flitting out of Daena's range once again, as the neko gracefully shot forward once again. "You are nothing but a princess! A spoiled, useless…"

_Princess_. Someone had once called her that, but who? _Not Elazul_.

Pearl turned to glare at her, and somehow, even ducking and retaliating against Daena's whipping strikes, Sandra managed to return the look. "I'm no princess..." Pearl began. "I've never been anything but Jumi, and I will be Jumi forever, tears or no tears! We may have lost our tears, our status, our power, but we will never lose ourselves!"

Sandra cackled, and out of the corner of her eye, Pearl saw the monstrous creature that was with her, a chilling smile on his face. "The Jumi did lose something, but tears it was not... You think you have only ever been Jumi? Listen to what your core tells you, if you are not too brainless to hear it! Shameful, someone like you, heiress to the memories of antiquity..."

_The memories of antiquity_. Sandra's voice echoed in her head, and Pearl felt some of those memories stirring, begging to be heard, as Sandra continued.

"Jaded stones which lost their clarity. Elazul the knight and Pearl the guardian! What a pathetic pair you make!" Sandra sighed. "I really wish you had never found your guardian, Elazul. It would have been better if she had died when she was meant to. This is nothing more than a just punishment for saving her, and for you, Pearl, as well, for what you did to Florina. Now you can suffer as I suffered, watching Florina dying, wishing I could take her pain as my own."

_How did she know of Florina? When had she watched her suffer? _It was almost there, and slipped from Pearl's mind again.

Sandra's eyes glittered, and Pearl realized she was telling the truth. She absolutely _hated _the both of them.

Elazul twitched at the mention of his name, but Pearl pushed him down, her hand on his core once again. She winced at the degree of pain she could feel, even secondhand. Sandra's hatred seemed to bring new life to the jewel hunter, and her next knife strike slashed into Daena's side, the cat-woman's last-minute twist the only thing that saved it from tearing open her intestines. Nevertheless, it dropped her to the floor in an instant.

Sandra turned away with no more thought for her fallen foe, striding towards the injured knight and guardian instead. She held both her knives in front of her, the one clean, the other glinting with blood so fresh it was still bright red. "So close, I am… Both your cores are now mine!"

"Like hell they are!" Spells from Bud and Lisa, hiding behind the cavern's boulders, blasted the jewel hunter, thorns and flames raining down on her from nowhere, made ever stronger by the powerful Mana of Mekiv. In that minute of assault, Daena painfully rose again, battered but alive.

It would only buy them a little bit of time, Pearl knew. "Elazul," she breathed, keeping the touch on his core for the comfort. Unable to heal him, she could only hope that the strength and intelligence she had always relied on would help him survive now.

He opened his eyes in response to her voice, and she met those piercing blue eyes to see something she had never seen in him before. _Fear_, she thought, but he had been afraid before. This was a greater fear. It was the fear of death.

That was what an injury to the core was, for a Jumi. Every other injury would heal as if it never was, no matter how severe, but damage to the core itself… a lost cause, with no tears to be had. She couldn't help that, but she had to do _something_, and so... she talked.

"Elazul," she told him, "You have never feared anything when protecting me." He tried to focus on her, but his eyes rolled, beyond his control. "You always try to pretend it's okay, even when you don't have all the answers." A blink was all the response she got. "You've shown me what courage is." As soon as she uttered those words, she… _remembered_, in a sudden flash of absolute, sparkling clarity… and she knew what she had to do.

He tried to speak and shuddered; Ariesa grabbed his torso protectively. Pearl gazed rather decisively at the other woman.

"He's yours now, Ariesa," she said, regret in her voice. The other woman looked surprised, but slowly nodded in acceptance.

Pearl stood to her full height, such as it was. Healing was not all of what a guardian was; they were keepers of Mana itself, and it was to that she reached, stretching deep into her core for something that had been hiding... something she couldn't see... but needed to be found. "I don't need the power to heal," she whispered. "Just give me the power to fight!"

The warmth was there first, and it enveloped her, like the comforting feeling of Mekiv, but a hundred, a million times, stronger, growing greater and greater until she thought she would pass out from the sheer sweetness of it all. But it only made it worse, worse for what she knew was coming…

It was sudden, and she shrieked at the _snap_, like every bone in her body breaking at once. Elazul screamed as well, a piercing, wailing sound, and it shot white-hot pain through her to hear. But the pain was of the heart, not the core, and for this reason, she hoped he could endure it.

The pain disappeared as quick as it had begun, but the aftermath was enough to make her shudder, even as she felt herself drifting away, and into a memory…

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"Who... ?" Elazul asked, his eyes hazy and only able to tell it was not Pearl that was there. Ariesa shushed him, cradling his head in her hands. He let it drop, being too weak to hold him up. Sweat beaded across his forehead, and she wiped it off with a finger. Daena pulled back from Sandra, cautiously watching over the two.

His cry still echoed in her head, a sound of profound longing, and loss. She pressed her other hand to his core, as she had seen Pearl do. He winced, and she pulled back, but his left hand grabbed her wrist, returning it to the jewel whose clarity was now muddled. It felt… discontinuous, like a river trying to work around a rock in the stream.

_She _knew who the woman in Pearl's place was, sort of. The woman who had terrified Pearl at the Tower of Leires.

Sandra knew her too, stepping back in surprise. "Lady Blackpearl? I did not really think the girl could..."

The woman called Lady Blackpearl laughed, a deep, throaty sound that was nothing like Pearl's high, soprano voice. "That hardly matters. Do you really wish to fight with me, Alexandra?"

"No, I would never dishonor the knight to the Clarius that way..." Sandra gulped. Ariesa watched in interest, finding she rather enjoyed seeing the tables turned on the hunter. Then Elazul shuddered, and she turned her attention to the man in her arms.

"Sandra, we must not let this beautiful stone die." The old man slithered in Elazul's direction, and Ariesa practically hissed, lifting her hand off Elazul's core to grab her discarded sword and slash it in his direction. He thought better of it, and stopped.

"Can you do anything?" whispered Ariesa to the twins.

"He's ruined. Forget him," Sandra replied.

Lisa pondered, and whispered back. "Not to the weird guy, there's something about him, I think it'll slide right off him. And Sandra's too close to him right now to target her."

"The crack does not matter," the creature in question answered. "It is only damaged, not shattered, and I can still take the Mana inside. It is the stone that matters, not his life." That simple, cold statement sent a spark of fear through Ariesa, and unable to think of anything else to do, she threw her own body over Elazul's.

"Then let's take the stone out and be done with it," Sandra said scornfully.

"Halt!" shouted Blackpearl, and Sandra turned in surprise, as if she had forgotten the other's presence. The mysterious woman was unfazed by all that was going on around her, single-mindedly focused on her adversary, and her voice cut straight to the point. "Is Florina alive?"

Sandra drew her sneer back on her face. "Didn't she always say, always find the answer yourself?"

"I remember," the tall woman said, stone-faced.

"Then that's what you should do, shouldn't you? I'll be going now. We'll meet again, Jumi Knight..." The tall woman dove for Sandra, swinging a large hammer that somehow Ariesa had failed to notice earlier, but just before it would have made contact, the old man snapped his fingers, and he and Sandra disappeared in a wink.

_Jumi Knight?_ wondered Ariesa. Pearl was no knight.

Elazul was shaking worse than ever, even the brief flickers of consciousness now slipping away from him. Blackpearl stepped regally over to him, to look down on the prostrate figure that was Pearl's knight.

"Elazul…" she began, the name sounding awkward on this strange woman's tongue. "Pearl... is gone." Ariesa could not be sure whether or not Elazul heard her. "You are now free, lapis knight. I'm sorry for the pain I caused you." She turned on her heel, and with a few long strides, she too was gone.

"Free_" was never what he wanted or needed, _thought Ariesa_. He needs to protect, to love._

But that didn't matter now. "Now, you just need to live," she whispered to him. She could still feel his core, its soft thrum reassuring her Elazul was alive, but there was no other answer.

Lisa knelt on the stone floor at her side. "He needs help. We need to get him out of here."

"I can't leave him," Ariesa told her, a bit panicked. "And I don't know if we can move him."

"We'll go to town for help," Bud announced. "We'll run as fast as we can."

"But can you run fast enough?" asked Ariesa. She wasn't sure how much time he had, or even if they can do any better once they got him out.

"Leave that to me," Daena said. "There's advantages to feline roots." She knelt down on all fours, then turned ordered the twins, "Climb on, and hang on."

They did as bidden, and though at first grunting from the weight, Daena took off on all fours like a shot, tearing out of the cavern like a lion. Ariesa blinked. She had no idea her friend could run so fast.

The twins shrieked in delight, a rich, alive, sound, but the echo faded quickly, and Ariesa was left alone with Elazul in the dim greenish light of Mekiv Caverns. It didn't feel like life to her now; it felt like the light was fading, along with Elazul's life.

She wished she had some supplies, a blanket, even a coat, something she could cover him with, or place under his head. Eventually, she settled for laying his head against her chest as she herself lay down on the cold stone floor, shivering slightly.

She stared up at the ceiling of the caverns she had always loved, wondering if the Mekiv itself could heal him. _It was the power of an old Mana Stone, right?_ It should be able to do _something_, otherwise it was just useless prettiness.

Her left hand remained at his core. It might have been her hope or imagination, but every time she touched it, it seemed to pulsate a little more clearly, though still nothing like what she had felt when she touched it before. In Geo, at the inn, it was like a spark of life every time her fingers brushed it. _If only I had a core of my own_, she thought, _maybe I could give him just a little bit of it... a few minutes might be enough..._

But of course, she did not, and she had nothing to offer him but the comfort of her presence. On impulse, her free right hand reached down to clasp his. The stone hand. The one he never let her touch.

She expected it to be cold, and though it was cooler than the rest of his body, it had an odd warmth of its own, like the core. Not the warmth of flesh, but something else for which she could find no comparison. _Had his arm always been like that_, she wondered? None of the other Jumi she had met (well, all two and a half of them) had the same.

She entwined her fingers with the crystal hand of the Jumi, and as she let herself imagine she felt her strength trickle into him, she waited, and wearily sank into sleep.


	27. Secrets: Trees

**Author's pretty random note: **Phew! This chapter was the toughest to write yet! There's a lot going on, some loosely ingame, some inspired by ingame, some totally my own… Would have taken longer to post, but I spent… what? Six? Eight? Ten? hours today sanding and polishing. Here you go.

I don't mind if you don't review, 'cuz my hit count tells me people are reading. This makes me happy enough. I figure everyone's enjoying things and understands what's going on. If not… I'll be happy to answer questions, comments, and speculations, even if I do end up mysteriously telling you "RAFO".

Going to bed now z z z z z z z ……

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**27: Secrets: Trees**

The chill drifted into her bones as it had a thousand times before. Anuella knew she was no longer living in the Norn Peaks, she was _hiding_ there, but it was the only refuge she could find.

She would go back to the wars soon enough, but they had been going on for ten years already. The _new_ wars, now called the Faerie Wars. She was not leading the side once controlled by her deceased mother, but nevertheless it already looked as if these wars would be longer, and more destructive, than the War of the Tree her mother had initiated.

And she couldn't shake the feeling she was responsible for it all.

She had never thought of herself as a mage, only ever as an artist, the one nicknamed the Artificer for her ability to bring life to the thinnest streams of Mana. But now, she rarely created. The materials were ever harder to come by, for one; her best had a bit of the rare Altena alloy, from the remains of her homeland, a concentrated bit of the same power that had once driven the kingdom to new heights.

The citizens liked to pretend it was not so, but Altena was in decline. What some now called the Altenan exodus had already began, the population trickle of a hundred years ago becoming a flood of those desperate to escape a failing land. She heard little of her cousin the queen, and wondered how much of the kingdom she was still holding onto.

Beside her, a lilipea _pwaed _happily, and she reached out a hand to the rotund pink creature. Those were her favorite dolls still; she and Selva had created them together - his wisdom, her magic - before he got entranced by war, and she had slowly, sadly realized that he wasn't the same person he used to be. Still, he did love the lilipeas, and they had the same affection for him.

Some of her other dolls had gone to war with him, and it disgusted her. She knew that was the end for them, her creations forever scarred with the horrors of battle.

That was the other reason she rarely created anything new. She had meant for her creations to celebrate Mana, to bring life, and now they were known as weapons of destruction. Even the instruments, that the fairies had trusted her to make. True, they were being used on the fairies' side, but it bothered her immensely.

She felt incredibly alone.

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"_Pwa_," Selva hear behind him. "_Pwa, pwa, pwa_," came from all directions.

It was a peaceful sound, and Selva couldn't help but grin. It reminded him of Anuella.

Lilipeas had never been meant to be a fighting troupe, but then again, if one wanted to be picky about it, neither had fairies, and they had made an impressive showing. The more so after the dragons had decided to join them, understanding as the fairies did, that Mana had to be protected.

But the Lilipeas were handy for some things. The fairies, with their instruments and powers of Mana led the way, but the lilipeas had that special touch that made them – untouchable? He had seen it a time or two with his own eyes; the fiercest magic attacks seemed to slide right off them.

It could only be the power of Mana protecting them; he found that reassuring. Most thought Mana had become more available after the conflicts. People always thought human wars had anything to do with Mana, even before the Goddess had died. In fact, Selva knew from Anuella that it was the other way around – wars started as Mana was scarce. What they thought was a result, was the slow, natural process of Mana resurging from the growing Goddess, until she emerged once again.

Too bad none of them would live to see that. Anuella had, reluctantly, enabled him to prolong his life the same way she had, after he discovered her secret. The splash of demon magic through the spell seemed, to him, a reasonable sacrifice to make; he wasn't half as bothered by it as she was. It still wasn't immortality, but it was something.

But the fairies were the ones, really, who would survive – that, and the Jumi. They would be there for the next few hundred years to protect the budding goddess. The old tree was a ghost, the new one a sprout.

He looked at the gathered lilipeas, finally voicing his thoughts. "That's what we're here for," he told the fuzzy pink creatures. "To make sure that Goddess had a chance to grow."

"Pwa," came the reply.

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Lady Blackpearl pulled up her grey skirts with unusual primness as she stepped through the mud of the soldier's camp. It was hardly her favorite place to be, but she had committed to these forces, and it was in her nature to follow through on her promises. Even though the Fairie Wars had been dragging on for twenty years already; but really, what was simple time to a Jumi?

In the distance, she could see the mage commander, Halciet. A red-haired, bulky, but not unattractive Forcenan man, he seemed an unlikely candidate to be leading mages, Forcena having resisted the influence of magic as long as possible.

But she couldn't imagine Forcena liked fairies much better. They had sided with the fairies in the War of the Tree, as Anise became a threat to the world, and her forces decimated the fairies, the mages bringing an end to the golden era that Angela had begun. Now, it seemed unlikely humans could ever achieve those heights until the new Goddess came into her own.

Blackpearl did not fool herself that Forcena was being anything other than pragmatic, always following where their greatest advantage lay. It was a rational strategy that had led to its steady climb to power, in contrast to Rolante, which staunchly remained on the side of the fairies even as the kingdom suffered. It was that sort of simple pragmatism that tied Forcena to the side of the mages now.

Of course, she had switched sides as well, but she had her own reasons.

There was another…. complication… one that she was endeavoring to think through logically. Halciet had made it adamantly clear that he wanted to be her lover, and though she was hardly inexperienced in that regard, her general feeling was that there were more important things to do. Still, the subject would have to be addressed eventually.

She had wondered if perhaps it was because she was one of the only women remaining in the camp. At least, one of the only ones the men respected, leaving out the various camp followers and serving girls, who were regarded as barely worth notice by the average soldier.

Mulling over the structure of the camp gave her some iota of distraction, as she approached the Forcenan commander. He was engrossed in conversation with two of his higher-ranking subordinates. She did not know their names; it made little difference to her.

"Lady Blackpearl," Halciet greeted, turning at her approach. "Please join us. We were just discussing Selva's forces and the Tower construction." Blackpearl remained silent as he continued.

"The tower at Mindas is going well, better than any others we have made yet. The city has plenty of magic in it still, even now that the university has chosen to leave, and it will be a fine place for us to gather that Mana and amplify it, the strongest one yet, with this many mages working on it."

"It will also make it the fairies' greatest target," Blackpearl responded.

"Perhaps. That is a risk that we will have to take. If only we could find the Tower of Leires, we could win this war for sure."

_But the Tower won't let you find it,_ Blackpearl thought to herself. _I guarantee that_. She hadn't had a chance - or the courage? - to ask her niece what she was doing with the structure, but she could guarantee Leires' first objective would be to make sure the Tower could not be found. Leires would never create a weapon of war, any more than she would help Forcena.

She let the rest of the others' words slide past her ears, until finally the meeting broke. Halciet turned to leave, motioning to Blackpearl, who settled in stride with him. She remained quiet, allowing him to speak first.

"You know the story of Anise at the tree, of course?" Halciet began conversationally.

Blackpearl nearly jumped at the name. _Why bring it up now?_ Surely he did not know the truth of Anise's demise? "Tell me," she said carefully, wondering how much of the facts he knew.

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_Anise had scrabbled through the remains of the Mana Holyland, desperately trying to reach the Tree. It had been hours she had been trying to find her way through the wreckage of the dead Goddess's domain, the wreckage Angela had created._

_She knew she could not get through to the sapling on her own – she knew the barrier was too strong. Her education spoke sense to her wishes in that regard. But she hoped, beyond hope, that the sword would be there to break the seal._

_A final rise stumbled over, and she was _there_._

_The old Tree, the old Goddess, was nothing more than a dried-up stump, as it had been for a hundred years. She had expected no less, really. It did not matter. That was hardly her main goal. Embedded in a root of that ancient, dead tree, was… the Sword of Mana._

_Lust filled her, lust for the power it contained, and unable to restrain herself, she lunged for it. Hands reached to tighten around the hilt, but as they closed, before her eyes, the Sword… disappeared._

_Anise knelt there in the dirt, stagnant water soaking the bottom of her dress, staring in disbelief. She tried to make something out of it, but really, the conclusion was inevitable._

_The Sword… had rejected her._

_She wailed to the heavens then, wondering why the Goddess, old or new, would choose to deny the world her powers of Mana. She found herself sobbing uncontrollably in shame and frustration._

_But she had come this far, and she would not be stopped. Slowly, her cries died, and she began to think. She had an advantage, as a member of Altena's royal family. She had access to documents, records, the notes that Angela and Valda had made as they studied artifacts. Angela had always hoped that those artifacts could be made into something more; truly, it had been the only hope for Altena. But no such luck; Valda had been right, they were nothing more than a memory._

_New artifacts would have to be made._

_It was some time – hours? Perhaps days? that she wandered that dead land, in somewhat of a daze, until the sensations of the landscape began to descend into her. The life that had not been burnt clear by Angela had become stagnant, rotting, and was now sinking into the earth to become new once again._

_But the rocks… the rocks still remained. Some were ordinary rocks, others pieces of stonemasonry of the structures that had once decorated the Holyland, delicate shrines and temples to please the Goddess. Columns, arches, statues, now broken and tumbling like the decayed Goddess herself._

_In a clearing, a raised platform supported the damaged form of a golden statue, that perhaps at some point had been a figure of a woman. Now, it was unrecognizable, crumbled into golden, deformed chunks._

_Arbitrarily, she picked one up, and was surprised at what she felt._

_It was the vaguest stream of Mana, no stronger than the artifacts, and much less – _organized - _might be the best word. But it was there, that whisper of the old memory of the Goddess. The rocks reached – for both Her dimension, that of the fairies, but touched the human dimension as well, and that meant they would answer to _her_ as well, if she could direct them just right._

_She spent days combing through that rubble, to find only the most potent, filling satchels and pockets with as many as she could carry._

_At first, she tried to get the fairies to amplify the streams of Mana for her, but they could not avoid her altogether, they refused her and shunned her. She returned to the Holyland with her prizes, forgetting to eat and drink, captivated by her treasures and unable to make them respond._

_She was desperate, and the rumor is that was when demons came to see her. They always found a way to the ones desperate enough to take their help._

_They provided her with another way. The stones were just dead enough, just chaotic enough, that the Mana inside them did not resist its true opposite, the death magic of the Underworld. No _Mana_, that was, but another force altogether, rarely understood and even more seldom touched by a human. Together, they produced a synthesis, and the stones began to burn with an unearthly light that seemed to focus on the user._

_Anise called these the Eyes of Flame._

_She made repeated trips to the Holyland to replicate her experiments, until one day, she went there with all of her souvenirs and a group of followers, to try and break into the tree itself. Her mages swore it was the beginning of a thousand year kingdom, that they would create the way that things would be until the Goddess returned to them, and they thought the Goddess would approve of what they were doing._

_The fairies, of course, had been watching; and Aion, king of the fairies, was there waiting for her._

_The battle was a disaster for the fairies, who, with no true experience of war, were butchered right and left. Aion was one of the first to go down._

_What Anise did not know, was that the forces of Forcena had been watching her with suspicion as well, and had also followed. Their reinforcements came too late to save the fairies, but soon enough to stop the mages. Their magic was not strong enough, and most were defeated, and captured, though a handful escaped._

_The fires of war burned, and the dried remnants of the stump caught the flickers, burning to ashes. When the fires died, the last of the debris had been cleared – except for the one sprout, still remaining serenely in the soil untouched._

_Anise remained among the burning ruins, watching her dreams fall to dust; but as the army advanced towards her, it was said the sorceress herself disappeared in an instant, just before the swing of the Forcenan leader's sword would have ended her life._

_It didn't matter. The golden age of hope for the new Goddess was over, and the wars had begun._

_With time, the conflicts wore down. Rolante entered on the side of the fairies, combining their might with Forcena. Nevertheless the mages resisted for many years, until the final blow came when Anise was reported dead._

"Why is it you are even telling me such a story, Halciet?" Blackpearl inquired. "It doesn't sound much as if you favored Anise." She herself remembered being on the side of the fairies, a hair too late for the decisive battle, but she knew the story well enough.

"I am from Forcena, but also a mage. Forcena first preferred the side of the fairies, mostly because they were not the mages. But there are reasons to admire what Anise did. She tried to bring Mana back to the world, even if her methodology was not ideal." Halciet paused. "I cannot agree with the fairies trying to keep Mana away from us."

Blackpearl merely looked off, and he continued. "Do you know what else the fairies did?" he asked. "They had demons on their side, pulling living people down screaming to the Underworld. Shadoles, those repugnant creatures that had arisen from the thoughts of Aion. The faeries cheered every time they took another human, another soul whole, to become a shadow of the Underworld as well. It was said that even from the dead, the fairy king Aion controlled those shadows of fairies. Olbohn went to the Underworld to put a stop to it, sacrificing himself, never returning."

"You knew Olbohn?" Blackpearl wondered. The man had been once called the "Holy Knight", one of the proudest of Forcena.

"When I was a much younger recruit, he was my captain. He defected to the mages, while I fought with Forcena, but now that duty pulls me to this side, I see the sense of his ways."

Lady Blackpearl found herself looking at Halciet in a new way. A man driven so strongly by the force of his beliefs, with a precise understanding of Mana… it was something to admire, in the greedy and selfish place the world had become.

Halciet bid her goodbye with a squeeze on the shoulder, and walked off.

"I can only hope the strength of your convictions will see you through," she said to his departing figure, too quietly for him to hear. She was barely hanging onto her own, herself.

------------------------------------

It was a rare moment in these war-torn times that Anuella found herself with anything resembling peace of mind. It had been years already that she felt she had been fighting, and thoughts of the war occupied every waking moment.

"Why have you brought me to Lumina anyway?" she asked her companion.

"Taking a break?" Anuella gave Selva a withering look. "Come on, Anuella, trust me. I think there is something here worth seeing."

She and Selva sat in the tavern of the moonlit city, the war a distant memory. In the corner of the room, a strange bird-man strummed a lute and sang mournfully.

"Pokiehl. They call him the Poet of Truth," Selva duly informed her. "He's catching the attention of many, especially nowadays."

She understood why quickly enough. It was the words of that slow, sad tune that caught her, drawing her in hypnotically.

"The Goddess is the light, the light within the darkness, the light within the night," he sang. "She could not see herself, only outlining herself in shadow to see the negative space. And she created the universe, everything in its place." He paused to strum his lute, each note reinforcing the power of the lyrics. "The tree is love. It is Goddess, below and above. Power, desire, and fear, they all disappear, falling to the ground, surrounded all around. The echoes of one's soul see the Goddess that makes it whole."

Selva leaned forward, inquisitive. "Do you think he is right?" he said. "That the tree means everything he means, when we have gotten along so well without it?"

Anuella twisted sharply. "How can you say such a thing? After all we've been fighting for, all this time?"

Selva only shrugged. "Just wondering. No harm in that."

Anuella turned away from him once again. Selva's comments bothered her primarily because she had enjoyed Pokiehl's performance so much. There was something in his song that made her think there might be hope still. He was a different type of hero.

The show ended, and ignoring her companion's protests, she swept up to follow the bird. A goofy straw hat covered his eyes, and idly she wondered how old he was. It did not matter, for what she wanted to ask him.

"Pokiehl?" she asked.

He turned, tipping his hat slightly but still not exposing his eyes underneath. "That's me, ma'am," he told her. "Messenger of the cosmic truth, at your service. What can I answer for you?"

Anuella contemplated that for a moment. "What do you think the truth is?"

"It's something to be desired," Pokiehl replied. "It's something that is of the Goddess, but few find themselves really able to understand it. The truth is, it is love. In any case, we can't question the Goddess. Someday, she will show up again, whether we like it or not, even for those who think it's more trouble than it's worth. Whether we are prepared or not, and until then, we just have to guess at the truth, now don't we?" he finished.

"I believe in your truth," she told him. "I believe in wisdom."

Pokiehl adopted a somewhat suspicious tone. "Who are you?"

"The Wisdom of Light," she replied simply.

He did lift his head to look at her then, and those bird's eyes were black, but with the depth of the stars, and Anuella understood. Where he came from, she had no idea, but he was something of Mana itself.

"I am here to ask you to become a Wisdom as well," she continued.

Pokiehl pondered that for a moment, cocking his head so his beak pointed slightly upwards instead of down. "What sort of responsibility does that entail? I tend to like to wander."

"Whatever you think is wisest," she replied. "But I would suggest… you are in tune with Mana, perhaps you might align with the Tree element. It means, in a sense, keeping an eye on the Goddess herself."

Pokiehl nodded then, slowly, but it was agreement. Anuella let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. The world needed some of his wisdom before it forgot the Goddess altogether, and if he could touch others with his song as he touched her… She would take every chance she could to have them remember.

------------------------------------

Thirty years of war were wearing her down. Anuella meandered through the forces of the fairies, wishing she could find a justification to be anywhere else.

Shouts of "Wisdom!" were heard, but she was finding she liked that title less and less. Or more accurately, she hardly felt she deserved it. She knew the purpose to what they were doing, the wisdom, but her emotions kept getting in the way.

She found herself grateful for the presence of the dragons. At least, those she could be proud of, ancient dignified creatures. They disliked the way things were going as much as she did, and they weighed every decision with that import.

Vadise ambled to join her, the white dragon approaching her with a hint of supplication, leaning her long neck down to talk. "Wisdom," she asked, "I make a request of you," she said, accent overtaking her words.

"What worries you?" asked Anuella, wondering what the dragon might want from her.

"The forest you see, it protects my stone, the stone of Tree," Vadise told her, motioning to the green lands to the east. "Enough Mana remains to keep the forest in the moment, but it will be fading before the new stone takes over."

"Is the stone in danger, then?" asked Anuella.

"Not exactly, though that becomes part of it," Vadise replied. "But you see… it is a place important to me, and I wish it to survive…" she said, sighing.

The dragon did not need to explain the rest. Anuella was well aware that the elves were leaving the forest in droves, along with the Altenans that had mixed in with them. Between that, and the loss of the Tree Stone, there was little being drawn, and soon enough winter would overtake the forest where Vadise lived as well. Unless…

"They say you make great things with Mana power," Vadise said cautiously, leaving the sentence open.

She had one item she had not been sure how to use, but now she realized it could help Vadise. "I will bring something to you." The dragon looked grateful.

The sound of voices both high and low signaled that they were fast approaching the congregation of dragon, fairie, and other forces. An occasional Jumi rounded out the group, including her own distant cousin, a young and driven woman named Diana, always the first to give her tears. Nevertheless, the woman studiously avoided her, despite the link of blood. The dragons had gathered on the top of the mountain today, the post of Akravator. In the center of the circle was Argot, the one who guarded the stone of light, and it seemed for that reason the others of his kind deferred to the enormous, silvery-white dragon.

Argot raised a clawed hand to signal for silence, raising himself to his full height; Anuella had to admit, he did look rather impressive. "Allies, the towers of the mages must be destroyed if this war is to end. We are taking down the towers of the mages, but not fast enough. I have been talking with the fairies, and in light of the mages' continued resistance, we have concluded there is only one choice. We must summon a Wyrm."

Murmurs ran through the crowd, and Anuella felt chills down to the bottom of her soul, fear and panic gripping her. _Wyrms_. Shadows of dragons, from the edge of the universe where the demons resided. Incredibly powerful, so necessarily only summoned by the power such as only a dragon had, and even so, once summoned, nearly impossible to control.

She turned her head. "What is he thinking?"

Vadise only shook her head in confusion. "Perhaps he thinks things cannot get any worse," the dragon suggested. Anuella was certain they could.

"Do not fear," Argot responded with booming voice to the doubt circling around him. "I will use the power of the light stone to control it."

"That's just it!" came the sharp voice of Akravator. "You guard a Stone, as do the other dragons here! You are too valuable to waste!"

Anuella was not at all happy with this development, but Argot was right. The war had been going on far too long. "What of the other stones?" she asked her companion.

"My tree stone will be safe," Vadise said hopefully. "Bahamut guards the stone at Leires' tower closely. The moon and tree stones will remain in balance."

Anuella silently pondered. "I wonder if Lady Blackpearl thought of this when the war began? And what is she going to do about it once it happens?"

"The Jumi?" Vadise inquired. "I… met her. First the one time, long ago."

"What did you think of her?" Anuella asked, curious.

"She was younger then, before even being Jumi," Vadise answered. "But there was… something of her, of both priestess and Amazon. I hope such inner strength from then she has still."

------------------------------------

The Fairie Wars had been going on for three decades now, and no end in sight. Too long for a human war, but to Blackpearl, it was more of a distraction.

The dragons had been doing quite a good job taking down the towers as fast as the mages could put them up. _It was something with Mana_, she coolly analyzed the situation; the dragons' connection was closer, relatively speaking, and they simply had the advantage in hijacking the Mana the mages tried to gather, especially with the fairies on their side as well.

Simply put, it was a brutal competition, and the mages were at a disadvantage. Most of the remainder of the forces did not have her simple objective assessment, cursing the day the dragons had joined to the fairies.

It did not change her goals. There were Jumi on both sides, of course; they had been a part of the Fairie Wars since the beginning, some of the older ones having even been part of the War of the Tree. And it was to the Jumi that she was going.

They were a scattered group, and they looked to her for something resembling leadership, putting her far above those who were technically the commanders. Today, though, she found them clustered together, and as she approached her people, Rubens stepped out to meet her.

He was a fiery-tempered man from deep within the desert, one who had been part of the War of the Tree as well; and possibly her closest friend here, except for Halciet, to whom she had gotten… a little closer. Rubens was full of both anger and hope, the twin emotions often seeming in him to be one and the same, and the sheer force of his emotions lit the proverbial fire under the other Jumi, keeping them allied even as they began to question what they were doing.

Blackpearl found herself relying on him to help solidify her own leadership. The Jumi needed to stick together. As the mages were pushed further and further back, they started to eye the Jumi with a hunger, a jealousy, and Blackpearl was afraid of what might be on their minds.

"They are looking at us like a wolf hunting prey," he noted.

"An apt metaphor," she replied.

Hunting had been… a problem… for as long as the Jumi had been around. The Jumi brought back their own with their tears, giving those same tears to ordinary humans, healing where they could. As far as she knew, no Jumi's core had yet been shattered beyond repair, and she could only hope that the simple greed of humans for those cores would make sure it remained so.

"What do they want from us?" Blackpearl asked quietly, the question largely rhetorical.

"They thought we could amplify Mana for them, as the fairies refused to," Rubens replied scornfully. "I think they are disappointed to find that we merely hold Mana, we cannot use our powers in the way they had hoped. They wonder if they might have better luck with the core itself, without the nuisance of it actually being attached to someone."

Blackpearl contemplated the problem. "Have everyone pair off, just in case. No one is to be seen alone. Have those strongest in healing join with those most able to fight."

"That makes sense," Rubens said. "The stronger the core, the more danger they might by in. But…" he asked with concern on his face, "what about you?"

"I will be fine," Blackpearl said brusquely. Rubens raised an eyebrow to show he had doubts, but did not voice them.

A messenger came running up for her. "My Lady, Halciet wishes to see you." She gave Rubens a quick nod, and followed the young man wordlessly.

Halciet was in his tent, writing by lamplight. "Blackpearl," he greeted her.

He was showing the wear, she could see. Years of war had weakened his hopeful illusions, but his position as commander drove him with its responsibility. But she saw it, late at night, when she was alone with him, and the barely-concealed tension came through.

Now, however, he was all seriousness. "This came today. It was brought to me personally, still sealed." He handed her a piece of paper.

She raise an eyebrow in surprise as she read it. "A message from Anuella? She requests a meeting?"

"I am not sure what kind of meeting," he told her. "It sounds like something she's not exactly advertising."

"Then why show it to me?"

"Because I want you to go to her."

The question burst to Blackpearl's lips. _To meet with her, or to kill her?_ A memory surfaced of Anise, broken and dying, and she remained silent. If she did not ask, she could not be blamed for anything she failed to do later.

"When will I be going?" was finally all she asked.

"Tonight," he replied.

------------------------------------

Anuella waited, clad in black, shivering not so much from the cold but from the simple closeness of the mages' lines. At this distance, she could feel the Mana wafting from the camp. Not as strong as from her side, but not dismissible, either.

It didn't help, either, that she had been waiting here for hours already, anxiety building as she questioned her judgment in even doing this. Finally, she heard a rustling, and another cloaked figure approached.

It pulled back its hood to reveal long, silvery hair that reflected even the small globe of Jinn's moon, the only light breaking this night. "Lady Blackpearl," she said in surprise. "I was not expecting you."

"You would prefer someone else?" the familiar low velvet voice spoke.

"Not really," Anuella admitted. Blackpearl only waited patiently for Anuella to state her business.

"The dragons are going to release a Wyrm," she finally forced out breathlessly.

The barest flinch of expression was visible in the weak light, but enough for Anuella to know she had hit a nerve. "A Wyrm? What are they thinking?"

"They are getting desperate to end it all," Anuella told her. "I am looking to you to provide some rationality. Convince the mages to end the war."

Blackpearl sighed. "There is nothing I would like better. I would prefer not to oppose you, but I think I have little choice. It is ironic, that we may be the two most powerful women in the world right now, and we still can do so little against the tide."

Anuella found herself inclined to agree, but could not let it go. "Then make me a bargain," she said. "It has all gone too far. I wish to no longer be a part of it. I will no longer work towards destruction, if you agree to do so as well. Furthermore, I swear I will no longer raise a hand against you yourself."

The other woman did not move, and Anuella continued. "The Jumi will be in more danger, the longer this goes on." A cringe showed her she had hit a sore point. "Go away, Blackpearl, and take your people with you. Somewhere where you will be safe, and free from the chaos the world has become. I wish I had the luxury to leave as well." She thought of one more small thing. "There are several Jumi with me. Make sure they go with you as well, so neither side has an advantage. There is one in particular, Diana. She has power within her, and I do not wish for that to be wasted on this war."

The sounds of the night filled a long moment of silence. "Agreed," Blackpearl finally said, and offered her hand. "I look forward to the day the Jumi will be free from danger."

An impulse took hold of Anuella. "You could join with me. You could be the Wisdom of the Moon. Don't tell me you don't want the chance."

For a moment, the other woman considered the offer, but her mind finally settled. "The Tree has wisdom, and wants," Blackpearl simply replied. "The Moon only _is_. It changes as it needs to. It responds. It does not desire."

An elaborate way of saying _no_. But the answer was not negotiable. "I probably won't see you again, then." Anuella said. "I wish you well, Lady Blackpearl."

The other woman nodded, and turned to go. As she reached to pull up her hood, she turned for a moment. "LadyAnuella," she began, "I am sorry about your mother." She waited as if to say something more, then changed her mind and slid into the night.

------------------------------------

Blackpearl was doing her best. She told herself that time and time again, every time she made the case for surrender, for truce, for anything that would let her take the other Jumi gracefully away.

Halciet stubbornly refused to hear it. At the start, his arguments were potent, detailed, giving respect to her words at least, but she found the more she argued, the curter he became.

It put a wall up between them, a wall that could not be crossed, and every day her lover eyed her with more suspicious eyes. And she was finding in her heart that though she still had passion, she had little trust in him left.

She had support, she knew. Despite all the mages eyeing her fellow Jumi as if they were only jewelry – that, in and of itself, was reason for her to push – many were tired of the war, and looked to her to finish it all. The Jumi themselves were weary, and wished to be done and gone; Rubens himself was finding hope difficult to fan.

"How much longer can we take this?" she asked, leaning back on her arms.

Rubens looked at her seriously. "I don't know," he told her. "So many things we did not anticipate that would result from simply trying to help."

He reached out arms to squeeze her shoulders in a friendly manner, and she let her head lean onto his hand, weariness no longer allowing her to hold it upright. She shut her eyes, and for a long moment, allowed thought to leave her head.

The sound of heavy steps brought her back to reality, and her eyes flew open to see Halciet staring at her, only steps away. His eyes were a snarl. "So this is what it is about," he said, voice cold. "It's clear why your direction changed so suddenly. Tell me, how long have you been with him?" he taunted, as both the Jumi tensed. "How many times have you been in his tent, when you're not with me?"

"It's not like that – " Rubens began to rise to his feet, but his defense was cut off as the thick fist and arm of Halciet drive him to the ground.

"No!" Blackpearl cried. "What do you think you are doing?" Rubens pulled himself up onto elbows, mud now covering his red coat and bits of his hair. Hurriedly, she leaned over to prod at the injury. Thankfully, it was to Rubens's chest, not his core; painful, but not lethal.

Halciet did not seem inclined to hear her out. "I knew it," he told her. "All your passionate, whispered words, were nothing but lies. You have no heart, nothing but that jewel at your neck to drive you. You will always choose the Jumi." Around them, some officers and common soldiers gathered to watch the commotion.

Blackpearl tried to protest, but the words stuck. Deep down, she knew he was right. _Jumi, before anything_. Romance did not compare, this was something else, this was a core of what she _was_.

"What about all we have fought for together?" she shouted back at him. "Does all of that effort mean nothing?"

"What have _you_ been fighting for, Lady Blackpearl?" he challenged.

Rubens groaned, and Blackpearl found herself wishing she had even one tear for him. But she never had. He would have to endure until she found another Jumi to heal him. "Mana," she said softly.

"Mana?" Halciet sneered. "Forget it. You can keep your Mana." With no further words, he strode away, and Blackpearl found her hand stretching out to him involuntarily. As if he sensed it, he turned after a few steps.

"You know, I only wanted to love you," he told her, then walked away once again, this time for good.

The soldiers parted to let him pass, but he did not slow, and steadily made his way to the borders of the camp, then beyond, clearly with no intention of returning. Blackpearl watched him go with a hint of sadness, as out of the corner of her eye she saw a couple of the younger Jumi tending to Rubens. It was necessary, but so were many things she could not bring herself to like.

If she could have cried then, she might have. She could remember a time when he had wisdom, and understanding, knowledge of Mana itself, and it gave him a depth she had never seen before. But somehow, all had been lost, as futile as the war they were fighting.

Rubens put a friendly arm around her shoulders, and a fragmented Blackpearl was grateful for the restraint, otherwise she worried that she might find herself running after the man, find herself saying something she would be sorry for later.

"Who will lead us now?" one of the officers worried.

Rubens nudged her upwards, and she rose to her feet, putting on her most commanding tone. "We will decide that tomorrow. For now, evening is falling, and we must rest." She breathed a sigh of relief as they obeyed, dispersing to their nightly activities, and finally leaving her alone with her frustration and grief.

Alone, that was, except for Rubens, who kept her company well into the night. She was grateful for platonic companionship. The camp gradually quieted down, as she and Rubens talked of things both important and trivial, until finally, he nodded off, leaving her trapped in her head once again.

As the full quiet of dark set in, thoughts trickled through her head to fall out at the other side and begin the path again. _A Jumi always had too many years of thoughts she could mull over, _she thought ironically. Finally, the reflections faded enough to allow her to fall into a fitful sleep.

Only to be awoken by rumbling noises outside, daylight only barely beginning to hint through the sky. She sat bolt upright, Rubens stirring next to her. "What is it?" he asked.

Blackpearl did not answer, pulling herself up in an instant and cautiously peering out of the tent flap.

The roar grew louder, as she emerged into a scene of chaos. All around her, the mages and soldiers were running, screaming. Only the Jumi seemed to remain unruffled in the middle of it all, here and there one visible moving through the camp with measured calm.

She felt it before she saw it. Blazes of light pierces the sky, heralding the arrival of the monstrosity that Anuella had warned her about, a enormous serpentine creature slithering in the air above, its shadow easily covering the camp and beyond. It opened its gaping maw to expel not flames, but heaping waves of twisted Mana, shattering everything it encountered. It inhaled, sucking in the broken remnants and a handful of unfortunate people, screaming as Lucemia clamped its jaw shut to swallow their lives away.

Rubens stood his ground behind her, as oddly calm as she herself, watching Lucemia carve its path of destruction through the forces of the mages. Suddenly, with a grandiose swirl, it turned and slithered until its gigantic head was poised above her.

It focused on her, and attacked.

Instinctively, Blackpearl reached for her core, behind her sensing Rubens doing much the same. Lucemia dove for them, shrieking its anger, and she braced, ready to face whatever the Goddess brought to her.

The sheer force of the assault erupted like a shockwave, leaving her stumbling for balance, but she felt no pain. She held her ground for a long moment, and then there was… nothing. She looked first at herself, then at Rubens, noting with surprise that both were completely untouched.

A quick look around told her others were not so lucky. All around her, tents had been torn off stakes, supply carts caught on fire, people struggling with bones clearly broken if not shattered, and everywhere screaming to be heard.

Lucemia continued its ravage across the camp, and Blackpearl heard herself shouting orders to the other Jumi, commanding them to collect the others to safety. _Halciet_, she thought, _what a time for you to abandon us_. It made little difference either way, an unemotional edge of her mind thought; the tide had turned against them.

------------------------------------

The snowy landscape of Altena stretched below the country's northern peaks, the view stretching eternally. Selva gave him a moment to reflect on it.

"Lucemia," Akravator mused, addressing the words vaguely in the direction of his dragoon. "It left a path of destruction across the land, cities and mountains falling before it, growing ever larger as it fed on the chaos it created. It is only some twist of fate or luck that it decided to try and swallow a volcano, or we would be struggling to contain it still."

"It broke the mages," Selva reminded him. "Didn't destroy them, but it's something."

"Argot died to summon it. Was it worth the cost?" the dragon mused.

"It may have been necessary. The mages are learning to summon as well. The birds told me," Selva said.

Akravator pondered this. "How would they even learn _how_? My suspicions tell me Drakonis may have had a role. No other dragon would do such a thing, but what might be his motivation?"

"It doesn't matter who taught them, my liege. What matters is why they are doing it," Selva suggested. "Thirty years of war. They must be getting desperate as well, especially after their defeat at the hands of Lucemia. This is their only chance for victory." He himself was more troubled by the target, and he was afraid he knew. Anuella.

He couldn't bring himself to believe Lady Blackpearl would be behind it. Rumors were that she was no longer with the mages; and whispers had extended through their camp of their own allied Jumi leaving soon as well. No, this was something of the mages on their own, whoever was directing them now. Perhaps no one was in charge any longer.

But in any case, he was ready.

------------------------------------

Anuella trembled slightly as she saw it approach in the distance. Selva had not pretended she was anything more than bait, but she was fearful nevertheless.

"Geimaswald. The Wyrm of Thunder," she announced. Selva nearly smiled. He was the dragoon to the dragon of the winds, and the sky was his element.

He hovered some meters above the ground, the gentle flap of the cancun bird's wings holding it and its passenger aloft. "Hold still, Anuella," he cautioned, as the greenish-gray shape began to fill their vision.

Behind him, the lilipeas' chirps were turning into squeals and shrieks, even though they knew just as well what they were doing here. Bait, again, even stronger.

From out of nowhere, as planned, Akravator swooped towards the Wyrm, driving it directly towards them. Even through the Wyrm easily dwarfed the dragon, it fled, nevertheless.

That was Selva's call to action. With a gentle pat, he directed the cancun bird forward, and up. The lilipeas ran after his trail as he swooped higher and higher, into the atmosphere above. And to them, the Wyrm came, like a moth to the flame.

Faster and faster it tore through the sky, its bulbous, insect-like head leading a long, slinky body that curled through the air. It roared, showing a mouth ringed on all sides with sharp, pointed teeth, hundreds, ring upon ring.

Selva had no intention of finding himself inside those.

He clucked, in the language of the birds, and the cancun bird dove, the Wyrm roaring its fury behind him. Winds battered him, but the bird held its flight.

Selva set a course spiraling towards the ground. Closer, and closer, until he could see the lilipeas below him, bouncing like balls of pink fluff.

He was only inches above the ground when he flung himself off into the forefront of the lilipeas, leaving the cancun bird to soar gracefully into the sky. The Wyrm did not follow, captivated by the Mana of the lilipeas, and set its course like a hungry dog.

Selva ran along with them, the tiny creatures fearful but brave, eyes on the goal ahead. It was only a little further…

The cave entrance came into view. _Mekiv_. The caverns of life, where no demon could hope to survive for long.

The lilipeas bounced and jostled to get through the entrance, motioning them through, he being the last to go through, finally crossing the border of it as Geimaswald bore down on them.

The Wyrm crashed through the opening, rocks raining down as it shook the entrance, only to find itself wedged firmly in the cave mouth, drilled firmly in by the force of its assault.

It screamed and cried, and Mekiv fought back with the power of Mana seeped into the earth itself. Selva did not know how to describe it, but it seemed the Wyrm had been somehow… contained… first ceasing its flailing and writhing, then seeming to _shrink_. Selva blinked his eyes, but surely enough, when he opened them, it was smaller, before his eyes reducing to a snake-like creature, wriggling its way across the damp floor of the caverns.

He drew his weapons, preparing to give the thing a killing blow, only to hear a female voice call, "Halt!"

Anuella strode in, part brazen confidence and part bone-deep sadness. Behind her, Akravator's head poked in inquisitively. "You do not have the connection to the Goddess needed to protect you," she announced. "I must destroy it myself."

The Wyrm, or what remained of it, slithered and snarled as Anuella motioned nonchalantly with one hand. It seemed to follow her motion despite itself, and the watching lilipeas bounced and trotted agitatedly. Selva began to be able to feel it himself, the slow build of Mana inside the woman, fearsomely powerful and desperately sweet, all rolled into one.

Light slowly suffused her, resonating in time with the pale green throb of Mekiv's walls, and the Wyrm _shrieked_ then, convulsing painfully before dissolving into a shower of sparkling droplets, and all was silent for a moment.

Anuella dropped to her knees, gasping for breath with the effort of it all, and Selva ran to her, a gaggle of chirping, concerned lilipeas following him. He gathered her in his arms, tenderly, as he had not in some time.

"A Spell of Truth," Akravator said with admiration. "Few can do such a thing anymore."

Anuella sunk into Selva's embrace, too weak to either agree or protest. "What now?" he asked his dragon.

"Victory, and peace," Akravator replied. "That was the last of the mages' strength."

_Peace, for the moment_, Selva thought. Akravator may have been correct that the mages had exhausted themselves, but he didn't fool himself that they wouldn't be back.

------------------------------------

The mages would return, Anuella knew. At least Blackpearl had kept her word; the Jumi with the faeries had left, hopefully to someplace where they, at least, could live on in peace. One worry less, but the rest of her troubles kept her out of complacency, and onto the task at hand.

Not that she had expected, when she had first awoken Gaeus, that this task would take her to the _Underworld_. A place she had not planned to see so early, and hopefully never.

"Hey! You can't be walking around out here!" a voice squealed. Anuella turned to see a Shadole, the odd creatures born from Aion's thoughts in his death. "You have to see Olbohn to go further."

"Why?" Anuella challenged.

"How the heck should I know? It's some kind of rule!" it squealed.

Anuella only nodded. She suspected at much, and it was simple irritation that made her contrary. She had only come here to see Olbohn anyway, and she followed the Shadole into the warm depths of the earth with that goal in mind.

Her first sight of Olbohn took her by surprise. Where she had been expecting a man, she saw a horrific creature with a bulbous head covered in eyes that looked every which way, and numerous arms that flailed frantically in all directions, making her dizzy and not a bit nauseous.

"How did you even know of me?" he demanded.

"The dragons keep an eye on such things," she replied. Vadise was rather beholden to her, after the little present she had brought the dragon.

"You realize," he growled, "I am only tolerating you in my domain because of your prestige and the memory of your mother. Otherwise, I would have tossed you to my Shadoles already."

Cackling noises came from the creatures flitting through the room, and Anuella took a deep breath. She decided to cut to the heart of things. "I am here to ask you to be Wisdom."

Olbohn paused then, still angry, but grave consideration now crossing his face. "I have heard of your Wisdoms," he murmured. "The effort is good, but tell me why I should do anything for you?"

"Because we all have a part in the greater scheme of things," Anuella said breathlessly. "Because that wisdom needs to outlive me. Because I do not have the luxury of afterlife. Because I will not have a chance to see you under any other circumstances than what happens right now."

"The Goddess," Olbohn said scornfully. "I was once supposed to be her knight of holiness. It only got me so far," he said, motioning to himself. "I walk a different path now. You say She has a plan, but I don't see it. What does it have to do with Her at all?"

"Please," she uttered, feeling the begging enter her voice. "We are on opposite sides, true, but balance of opposites is the nature of the Goddess."

"What element could I be?" Olbohn asked, a bemused expression in all his numerous eyes. "Hypothetically, of course. Fire, I would think?" He looked around. "There's plenty of that here."

Anuella paused. "I had another idea," she told him. "Take the darkness. Your Underworld now is only the home of dark, not of the old chaos that threatened the Goddess. Someone must be able to watch the power of Shade." Olbohn seemed intrigued by that."That makes me the light, and you he darkness. Opposites, yes, but ultimately for the same purpose."

Olbohn laughed then, a sound both hearty and frightening. "You have me trapped by your words, Anuella. You have found a way for me to fight you and side with you at the same time." A dozen of those eyes focused on her at once. "Very well. I accept your offer. And let us hope, with time, that it will be understood that there is light within the darkness."

------------------------------------

"We cannot go on," Blackpearl insisted.

Vadise only looked at her with enormous blue eyes. Blackpearl had been coming to visit the dragon since she was a much younger woman, before she was Jumi, and even after. But it had been – years? Decades? - since she had last paid the white dragon a visit.

"We cannot continue to take part in the wars," she continued. _We_, of course, meaning the Jumi. "We have helped all we can, and it is turning on us." She took a deep breath. "Once, there was only the sparsest rumors of Jumi being hunted, and those were tracked down and brought back to us. Now… I don't need any skill of my core to predict. I can guess intelligently enough. I have already pulled away all the Jumi involved in the conflicts."

The dragon rested her head on forelegs before answering. "You think they come for you, yes?" she said in the rough, thickly accented tones of one speaking a language that was very new and very difficult for her. Blackpearl strained sometimes to understand the words, but she could. "You will go, then?"

Blackpearl paused, preparing to say words she wished it was not necessary to say. "We will have to retreat from the world. We can only protect ourselves, now."

Vadise did not argue, merely looking for a long moment.

"A city…" Blackpearl had not revealed her thoughts to anyone, not even Rubens, though he and the others would know soon enough. "An isolated city, difficult if not impossible for those not Jumi to find, where we can live together in peace."

"I will be sorry that you go," said Vadise. Blackpearl took that enormous snout in her two hands, stroking the fur-soft scales as she once had as a child, part of her wishing she could remember that innocence once again.


	28. Legends: Wisdom

**28. Legends: Wisdom**

Ariesa was confused when she first woke up. This was her wall, yes...

Reality came swimming back. She was on the padded bench under her window. Then if she wasn't in her bed...

"Elazul!" she cried. She swung her legs onto the floor, only to find herself embarrassingly crashing down as a wave of dizziness came over her, her knees buckling. She caught herself on hands and knees, and raised her head to look over at her own bed.

Thank the Goddess. There was Elazul.

"What are you doing?!" screeched the familiar voice of Lisa. "You need to stay in bed!"

"Elazul..." she muttered, and suddenly she felt Daena's furred arms lifting her, helping her walk over to the other invalid. She stumbled at the bedside, but shook her head to clear it. "What... is he..."

"He'll be okay. We think," said Bud proudly.

Slowly they filled in the gaps of the story in her head. How they had gotten the villagers to brave the caverns and retrieve the Jumi Knight who had become part of their community. How they had handled the question of where Pearl was. (Denial, denial, denial had been pretty much the order of the day.) How they had decided to bring a second litter, just in case, and were proved right when they found Ariesa slumped unconscious as well. "Better two injured than one dead," noted Daena.

Ariesa contemplated. That last memory from the cavern, the feeling of Elazul trying to survive… "When you're near, he seems to get better," Lisa said, as if reading her thoughts. "That's why we had you both here. We didn't think you would mind if he got the cushier bed."

"It's because you care for him, and he for you," Daena said softly. "With Pearl gone, he needs something to live for."

"It's worth a try," Ariesa mumbled. With the little strength she had, she clambered next to him, pushing aside her sudden feelings of impropriety. She hadn't worried about that holding him in the cavern, why did this suddenly seem so intimate now?

He did not move, but he was still alive, still there with her. Instinctively she reached a hand to his core. The last thing she felt was a small hand - she didn't know if it was Bud or Lisa? - pressing a wet cloth to her head as she fell back asleep.

------------------------------------

Elazul was dreaming.

He hoped he was, anyway, because there was no other explanation for the bizarre linkages of colors, shapes, images, that troubled him.

Flickers ran through his brain of a place that he thought was the Underworld, not truly able to form the picture of it, but experiencing rather the sensation, a deep, balmy cave with the feeling of immense age, even eternity. _The Underworld. Huh. Well, I won't be going there, I'm Jumi, _he thought to himself, surprised the thought was able to form.

Other figures invaded his thoughts as well. A golden-haired woman, not Ariesa. A Jumi of ruby; a Jumi of sapphire; both old, both hard. A beautiful, seductive woman clad in red, someone he felt like he had seen before. A tall woman in gray silk, hair shining like moonlight. A man with one woman he loved, and one he was sworn to protect. Past and present seemed to swirl together. _His past, or someone else's? The past of the Jumi themselves?_

The cave called to him, its warmth offering comfort, relief from the pain he was in. Fires seemed to flicker just out of the range of vision. He knew he should die, and he wondered why he hadn't already, but despite the haze, he knew he hadn't yet. He _should_, his core was injured deeply, but he still was somewhere at that critical divide between life and death, not knowing if he would fall to the Underworld, or make his way back.

_The Underworld._ The Mana, the life, of a Jumi was in a core, not a soul. And a core had not place _there_. How quickly would he give up? Would he stay there, clinging to life? It was said that was what happened to Jumi who were abandoned - _as Pearl had abandoned him_, he thought, a cut that ran much deeper than the one in his core. Or would allow himself to pass on, leaving only his core behind, on the slim hope of being brought back in the future, or else remain as nothing more than a damaged jewel?

Death tempted him, as it had once before.

------------------------------------

Elazul tossed and turned that night, talking in his sleep and waking Ariesa nearly every time, she jumping to alertness only to look over and see him deep in the throes of slumber. Except one time, when she turned to see some semblance of clarity in his eyes.

One word. "Pearl?"

Ariesa paused. "We don't know," she finally forced out reluctantly.

It wasn't what would make him feel better, but she felt he deserved to know the truth. He spoke in hushed tones, every word weighed and quiet, and that in and of itself freaked her out, coming from Elazul. "Pearl... I only ever wanted to protect her..." He trailed off for a moment, and she reached an arm around him, pulling him a little closer to her. It was a measure of his exhaustion that he let his head slump against her without even a fight.

"Will you take care of her for me..." His voice was hushed but pleading.

"You'll be taking care of her soon enough," Ariesa whispered back reassuringly.

He laughed once, ironically, and the effort cost him, as his eyes rolled back slightly, he slumping back onto the pillows. She pulled the collar of his shirt back to reveal his core, a spiderwebbing crack now marring what had been a smooth blue surface, darker but just as piercing as the blue of his eyes. She had not gotten a clear look at the injury before, and it made her gasp. It looked like it hurt.

She moved her eyes up from the stone to look him in the eye, and saw real fear there. "Ariesa... it's too late... core injuries are lethal, stones take thousands of years to be formed... but then they are so easily destroyed, in an instant…"

"Quiet," she whispered, but he ignored her, seeming only barely conscious of her. She couldn't allow herself to contemplate anything but his getting better. "You'll be fine."

"Only Jumi tears can heal... but Jumi cannot cry..." he forced out. "Jumi tears... are really..."

"Shards of life," she finished for him.

His eyes were glazing over. "So many things I should have said... done..." He focused on her for a split second, then drifted off into unconsciousness.

How she managed not to cry then, she would never know, but she threw herself over him. Whatever happened to him next, she would be there for it.

------------------------------------

Elazul woke up with moonlight shining through the window, and Ariesa lying next to him. Not merely next to him, but quite neatly wrapped around him. It felt… pleasant.

He allowed himself to savor that feeling for a moment, while he contemplated how much better he felt. The memories were hazy, but he remembered enough to know that he should be dead, or well on his way to the Underworld. But as he mentally scanned his body, he felt almost perfectly fine; except for his core, and that had only the faintest hint of pain to let him know the crack was still there.

How that had happened, how he had survived, he wasn't exactly sure, but he knew that responsibility waited for him. _Pearl_.

His sense of her felt a bit odd, somewhat unfamiliar and blurred to the point he could barely put a finger on it, but it was enough. Shutting his eyes momentarily, he knew he could point a finger in her direction. At some distance, yes, but at least he had a general path to follow. But he had to go before she got further away.

Reluctantly, he extracted himself from Ariesa's cozy embrace, her arm flopping down but her sleep undisturbed. He stepped quietly across the room to retrieve his possessions, and was about to turn down the stairs, when he paused, stepping back for a moment.

He knelt down on one knee by the bed, putting himself at a level with her still-closed eyes. Motionless, the only sound he heard for a while was the slow, even rhythm of her breathing, and the slightly more agitated of his own.

He looked at her contemplatively, trying to remember the way he had seen her the first day he had glimpsed her. _Why was she even _involved_ in all this?_ She was exactly what he had thought she was all along, a young girl without much knowledge of the world, not ready for the things she was seeing now. He should have never allowed it. He was Jumi, and he was prepared for the things he had been through; it was part of his very being. If he was fate's punching bag, so be it.

They would always be on different paths. He belonged to Pearl, and always would, and Ariesa deserved to live her life the way it had begun, in peace and freedom.

Only, he found it hard to dismiss her as casually as he had when they first met. She had changed, but… she shouldn't have to.

He reached up to her hair, lying messily across her pillow with the hairsticks removed, tangled from the shifts of sleep. He pushed one lock gently away from where it had fallen to tickle her nose. She twitched slightly, but did not wake.

He was leaving, and there would be no way she would be able to find him. _It was for the best, _he told himself_. _Why, then, did he feel full of regret?

"_I'm so sorry_," he whispered. The sleeping figure did not respond, and he silently turned without a backwards glance.

As he crossed the threshold of the house, a creak from a window above made him pause, but he shrugged it off. He took a few steps, and suddenly a sharp pain ran through his core, he stumbling and gasping for breath. Slowly, the pain subsided, and he straightened, resolutely heading for where his core told him to go.

------------------------------------

Ariesa woke up, feeling something strange was there. Then she realized it was something that was _not_ there.

"Elazul?" she cried. She tried to pull herself up, but her body wasn't ready, and she crashed back on the pillow, exhausted.

She heard running footsteps up the stairs, and then Bud burst into the room. "Ariesa... we didn't want to wake you, but... he's gone."

"Where's the core??" she cried, suddenly tossing blankets onto the floor, sheer panic giving her the strength. _Elazul, it couldn't be..._

"Whoa! Not like that! I mean he _left_." Ariesa looked up from the pillow she was about to throw off the bed.

"Left?" she asked, somewhat more calmly.

Lisa arrived behind her brother. "Sometime last night. We heard noises, and we figured one of you was just thrashing in their sleep."

"But then I crept to the window, and I saw him leave," filled in Bud.

Ariesa slumped back. Her stomach growled, and she realized she was _hungry _on top of it all. "Why? Why wouldn't he say goodbye?"

"Like he's any good at that," said Daena, coming up the stairs with what looked suspiciously like food.

"But he's out there alone... with a damaged core... I know he's looking for Pearl, but how do I find _him_?" she asked. Daena shoved breakfast into her hands, and wouldn't answer the question until Ariesa was halfway done eating.

"We've been talking about that, and I think the twins and I have come up with an idea," Daena finally told her.

"So?" Ariesa said between mouthfuls. Goddess, she was _starving_. "What have you come up with?"

"We think it's time to talk to Gaeus," Lisa replied.

"I want to ask him how to be a great sorcerer!"yelled Bud, bouncing around the room.

"We all have questions for him, and perhaps he can tell us where Elazul went as well," Daena suggested. "Whenever you're ready."

Ariesa dipped her spoon in the bowl, only to sadly find out there was no more. It helped though, her strength was rapidly coming back. "I'll be ready in an hour."

------------------------------------

Daena seemed scattered, distracted, as they made their way towards the Luon Highway. Ariesa placed one arm on her arm, and Daena suddenly snapped to attention.

"You startled me," she said.

"I'm not surprised," Ariesa told her. "You were completely in your own little world. What's on your mind?"

"Lots of things," Daena said, sighing. "What do you know about the Mana tree?"

"Well..." Ariesa thought back. _What did she know, really?_ Lots of stories, and little truth. "I don't know," she finally concluded.

"It makes me wonder, really, what we are all doing, and why," Daena replied. "I guess… that's sort of what I wanted to ask Gaeus about. I had this picture of the way things were supposed to go, and now…" She changed the subject, getting sidetracked once again. "What happens to your soul after it dies?"

"I've always feared it disappeared... but I hoped it would live forever." Ariesa shuddered suddenly, thinking of Elazul. _How injured was he?_ And here he was all alone somewhere, who knows where, looking for Pearl... "He's wounded," she suddenly said before she could stop herself.

Daena looked at her with sympathy. "I've been wounded a hundred times, but no one has ever hurt my soul. And Jumi cores _are_ their souls, Ariesa, from what I understand. They must be able to outlive a simple injury. He'll be fine, and worrying about him changes nothing."

Ariesa had her doubts, after what Elazul had told her. "I should go to him, somehow, I shouldn't have let him go..." She slashed her sword through the air in frustration.

"You think you should have stopped him." Daena suddenly stopped in the hot dust of the highway, and looked at her with piercing understanding.

She did think so. She also thought she should have gone after Pearl and promised to take care of her, but she was sure she had needed to stay, who knows what might have happened otherwise?

Ariesa mulled over that for a couple miles, and quiet settled over the two women, bringing her peace as she tuned out the thoughts of the twins running ahead with an energy she, in her current frame of mind, could not hope to imitate. Bud and Lisa behind them were talking and laughing, joking about Gaeus, the young people excited to go see him, especially Bud. It made Ariesa wish she could steal some of their good mood.

She didn't want to continue her morbid thoughts any more than Daena had wanted to continue her own. "You know, this canyon is the place my mother named me for," she said, desperate to change the subject.

"Oh?" Daena replied. "I figured as much, but did she tell you why? I never knew the story behind it."

"It's supposed to be the name of a queen of a kingdom that died here," Ariesa replied. "My mother wanted me to feel that I could take care of myself, that I could do anything I wanted."

She suddenly paused awkwardly. That had been what her mother had wanted for her, but she had so many doubts about herself still. Really, was she doing anything important?

"You have helped," Daena replied soothingly, when she voiced her thoughts. "Matilda knows, and I know."

"But that could have been _anyone_," Ariesa insisted. Uncomfortably, she remembered Irwin's comment on she and Elazul as a "gift"; she had been scared to bring that up with him, and was scared still. "What is it about me that makes a difference?"

Daena was left without an answer, leaving a somewhat brooding duo of confused young women.

"Wait! Isn't that Escad?" Lisa's voice finally broke into her thoughts. Daena turned her attention to the girl as well.

Sure enough, as they approached the living hill Ariesa knew was Gaeus, a familiar figure entered her view.

Daena strode ahead. "I have something or two to say to him." But as she barged forward, Ariesa pulled her back.

"Wait," she suggested. "Let him have his moment just as the rest of us." The waited back a few feet, trying to give the guy some space, but they could hear just fine.

"Why did Olbohn think I could defeat Irwin?" Escad was demanding, in a tone she wondered whether or not it was appropriate to use with a Wisdom.

Gaeus did not seem offended, if a hill indeed _could_ be offended. "A Wisdom does not think about just one victor. He chose you so that all shall win."

"That sounds like a lot of jibberish. I have never been tested by Olbohn, but he just sent me off to defeat Irwin. He probably could have done better himself."

Gaeus sighed, a low, rumbling sound that echoed across the valley. "People desire power, not the words of the Wisdoms. You will only gain what you desire. You are the one who will decide your own destiny. Olbohn told you the same. Asking me is pointless."

"Harrumph. That's what I get for talking with Wisdoms," Escad complained. "Never a straight answer from any of them."

Gaeus smiled indulgently. "I merely dispense advice, as I will do for those others who have arrived." Escad turned, finally noticing Daena and the group with her, eyes widening in surprise.

Daena and Escad together stepped aside slightly. "What are you doing here?" she inquired of him.

Escad slumped, defeat replacing his prior arrogance. "Hoping for some answers, though that didn't seem to work out," he replied, dejectedly. "I thought I was going to defeat Irwin, but I was pretty much getting my ass kicked until you show up. I keep seeing fairies, everywhere, you know, like they're trying to tell me something? Just like _she_ used to see them." He did not fill in Matilda's name. "Now I have no target for my anger, and a bargain to keep…" He cut off abruptly.

Ariesa's attention was split between the two, the enthusiastic twins charging down the slope, and Gaeus himself, a gigantic, rocky face with a whimsical expression that belied the millennia the hill had been there. He looked nearly as mischievous as Bud.

Speaking of… the boy was practically jumping out of his robe. "Hi, Gaeus!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, though the hill probably could hear just fine.

"Come closer, my children," Gaeus greeted him and his sister. It was the first time Ariesa had remembered Bud not being upset at being referred to as "children", as he barged forward and the twins climbed onto the outstretched, stone hand. Lisa squealed as they were suddenly lifted some distance into the air, to look directly into Gaeus's stone eyes.

Bud, however, was not in the least unnerved. "I wanna become a really awesome sorcerer!" he announced proudly. "What should I do?"

Gaeus indulged the young man with a gentle, rocky smile. "And Bud, what do you mean by wanting to be a "great" sorcerer?"

Bud paused for a moment, unsure of how to respond.

"I will tell you more," Gaeus continued. "You can be a sorcerer who is well-known, or a great sorcerer. There was once a mage named Halciet, who was larger than me in many ways."

"Never heard of him," Bud sulked.

"That's because he was forgotten, as was much of the history of the Fairie Wars," Gaeus told him. "But he understood Mana, and that was what made him great."

"What's there to understand?" Bud questioned.

"That you don't need to ask me about this, because Mana is everywhere, and it will speak to you if only you let it. You can choose how to use Mana. You just need to figure out what the Goddess wants you to do with it. You are still a child, you have the advantage that you are not yet trapped in the mold left by adults, you can created new ways."

Bud looked unconvinced, and Gaeus laughed. "So stubborn, young man. Would you like to know something more precise? Remain the way you are, create from your thoughts. You will be going on an adventure with a Jumi Knight seventy-three years from now. By the time you finish your adventure, your name will be known in the four corners of the world."

Bud perked up at that. "Wow! that's awesome!"

"Get yourself a proper teacher, one who knows Mana," Gaeus suggested. "One who knows Mana in a way that has been forgotten." That caught the attention of both twins, Bud looking perplexed, Lisa only considering.

Ariesa couldn't help but wonder. _A Jumi Knight?_ Could that be Elazul? Would it be Elazul's name known in the four corners of the world as well? _Stop thinking about him, _Ariesa reminded herself. It changed nothing, as Daena said.

"And for you, young one?" Gaeus addressed Lisa.

Lisa looked up. "Um... I'm okay, I guess. Not really any problems. Unless you know how to make my feet stop falling asleep, or a recipe for a really good whalamato sauce."

The children remained where they were, Lisa dangling her feet over the edge of the rocky hand and Bud looking out over the valley, as Daena approached, looking up at the hill. "Gaeus, you were right the last time," she greeted him.

"Ah, Daena," he replied. "That is why I am a Wisdom. Then Matilda is gone?" Daena nodded. "My sympathies," the hill replied. "She left for a new destiny."

"I suppose you're right," she replied. "But it just makes me think of so many more challenging things. Such as, why does this world exist?"

"Perhaps to let you think about what you have asked me. Perhaps to give spirit to your imagination. Do you affect the world, or does it affect you?"

"That is not what I wanted to hear!" Daena suddenly seemed unaccountably angry. Even Escad seemed surprised at her outburst. "Why do we exist? There is nothing we are supposed to do in this world, is there? Just survive, and suffer under the whims of the Goddess?"

"You misunderstand the Goddess, Daena. You are always searching to answers to your questions, answers that mean something to you. You may not always get the answers you want, what is meant to happen may not be what you hoped for, but as long as you keep asking, your life has meaning. It is only when you give up, and cease to renew yourself by thinking and feeling things, that you are no longer living as a part of Mana. Might as well be a rock," he said, with a chuckle.

Daena swallowed. "You're telling me the spirit can renew itself many times, but the body only decays. It depresses me to think that people _do_ die, in the end. Is it worth it?"

"You have emotion, and that is a luxury, a privilege of Mana and the Goddess's gift. You must decide for yourself if it is worth it. As you proceed towards your destiny, you will find out the advantages. It is something she will have to learn as well," he said, looking towards Ariesa.

"Me?" Ariesa looked around, but there was no one else in that direction, the twins having scattered to the other side. It reminded her uncomfortably of what Irwin had said, and she was suddenly afraid. "What do I know? What do I know about this world, the future?"

Gaeus looked at her. "You know this world is supported by Mana, the energy of life itself. You know that we are all connected - the lands of fairies, spirits, and humans, all connected to the Tree, the Goddess. You know that Mana can connect these things, and the stronger the connections, the stronger the world. The sproutlings know this. They are all connected, and that is how they survive."

"The sproutling outside my house said something like that," she replied glumly. "Everyone knows Mana holds things together."

"Yes, but there should be more for you… Unlike a plant, you don't know your roots. Few truly understand Mana, nor expect it to be bountiful, or to return. It has become a scarce resource to be hoarded, not something belonging to all."

"The Goddess provides Mana and links us all, they say." Ariesa wrinkled her nose. "Too bad the Goddess is a myth, Mana is finite, and I am no one of significance."

"The paths are always cut open by those without titles. Eventually you will become what people call a heroine."

"I don't want to be a heroine!" she cried. "All I want is to find Elazul before he hurts himself!" It made her think, uncomfortably, of her own thoughts earlier. _Who was she, really?_

"That Jumi guy?" Escad finally spoke directly to them. "What happened?"

"His guardian is lost," Daena filled in.

"Too bad. He's a good guy to have in a pinch," Escad grudgingly admitted.

"How do I find him?" demanded Ariesa of Gaeus.

The living hill looked at her. "There is... a connection of sorts. I can sense it from you. Pay attention to your heart and soul."

Ariesa was about to protest, but she hadn't seen that arguing with Gaeus had really helped Daena terribly much, so, swallowing, she shut her eyes, and tried to find what the Wisdom had been talking about. For a long minute, nothing, as she dug, but then her mind began to clear, and sure enough…

She felt something bubbling up from the depths within, and somehow, she _did_ feel wiser. It wasn't Elazul, exactly, though she felt like he was there in it all, but it was more a connection to totality, to Mana itself. She opened her eyes to see Daena looking at her, questions in her expression.

"Well?" the cat-woman asked.

"I'm not sure how well this will work," Ariesa admitted, "but I think I'm ready to try."


	29. Secrets: Choices

**Author's Note:** Halfway point! Woot! I'm scared to even TELL you how long this is going to end up being, but no one seems to be complaining. Nothing much interesting to say. Postings will probably continue on a ten to fourteen day schedule. I could actually probably slap the rest up in a week if I wanted to, since the plot twists are all in place, but the writing wouldn't really be that great. So, patience ;)

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**29. Secrets: Choices**

Florina was doing the best she could, Blackpearl knew. But the Clarius of the Jumi, the only one left with tears, _was_ showing the effects of her position, even after only a handful of decades, and she found herself wondering if her guardian could survive the hundred years of her tenure. Lady Blackpearl no longer needed even the sense of her core to know that Florina was suffering, withering, even though the girl tried as always to hide it behind that gentle smile of hers. And the rest of the city could see it as well, more every day.

_It was profoundly depressing when a knight could do nothing to help her guardian,_ she thought.

Florina tended to spend most of her time nowadays locked away in her chamber. She saw those who needed healing, of course, and Diana, and her knight, but the only real company she allowed in was Alexandra. Florina's former knight was as moody as ever, but she seemed to give the Clarius comfort.

She had steadfastly refused to try and draw off Blackpearl's own strength. "That's only temporary, and only for emergencies. Blackpearl, you are not a guardian," she chided. Grudgingly, Blackpearl admitted Florina was right.

Alexandra had never understood that part of the reason she could not be knight to the Clarius was because she simply wasn't strong enough. Lady Blackpearl had the strength for one in that position… but even so, it had its limits. She had been the knight to six with the title, one every hundred years since Diana had lost her tears, but each Clarius struggled harder as fewer other Jumi were able to heal.

Diana listened patiently as Blackpearl spelled all this out to her old friend. Though the Jumi leader had problems of her own; every day that Florina weakened was another day the general population blamed _her_ for the problem, as if it was her fault, instead of being a natural aspect of Mana that they had no more control over than the rest of the world.

Or maybe Diana _did_ feel it was her fault, Blackpearl thought. She had once been Clarius, and she had lost the tears that defined the position, that had once defined simply _being_ Jumi. On top of that, she hadn't exactly endeared herself to the population since, imposing harsh rules that tied the Jumi to their city, making them a race apart. Blackpearl knew why Diana had done such things, trying desperately to keep a dying race together; but then again, she herself had been around for longer than those disgruntled Jumi, and seen things in the wars and beyond that the younger generation could neither imagine or understand.

"Perhaps we are doomed," Diana muttered morosely. "We have so little sparkle left, so little Mana to give… Are we just an abomination, a drain on Mana that needs to be removed from the world?"

Blackpearl only blinked at that, but Rubens jumped up from his chair. "Diana!" he cried in alarm, rushing to her. He wrapped an arm around her waist, and she sunk against him as if he was the only thing left to hold her up.

"Can you think of something better?" Diana said, little intonation or emotion in her voice.

"I don't know what we're going to do, but I know we can't give up," he replied harshly. "We are not 'things', we are people, and we need to be able to keep ourselves together."

"Rubens… no wonder they call you the flame of hope," Diana said, brushing the side of his check affectionately. It made Blackpearl suddenly feel conspicuously out of place. "If it wasn't for you… I'd have no support at all in the city, and little energy myself to keep going."

Meanwhile, Lady Blackpearl found herself pacing Diana and Rubens' chambers like an anxious child. "Diana… we have been trying to keep the Jumi from extinction for so long."

"You in your way, and I in mine," agreed Diana. The woman already looked a little brighter, her shoulders lifted a little higher. Rubens had that effect on her.

"I am concerned…" Blackpearl flashed back to a dying mage, lifetimes ago. That woman had put the world in the chaos, trying to reach the power only the Goddess could give, and she couldn't believe she was even going to say what was about to come out of her mouth; it was already tying her stomach in knots. "I think… I think we may have to wake the Goddess early," she finished fearfully.

Diana twisted towards her in shock at that. "Blackpearl! What are you thinking?" But behind her, Rubens thoughtfully nodded his assent.

She knew she was probably making the wrong decision. It _was_ too soon. The Goddess wasn't ready. She had spent her whole life preparing for the return of the Goddess; in a sense, all the Jumi had, creatures of Mana as were the dragons and fairies. The Jumi were for the Goddess, not the other way around.

But the Jumi were also human, and they were afraid.

"I'm thinking we are running out of options. It's a risk, but… perhaps with we only a couple of centuries left to go until the Goddess's awakening, it could happen?" Blackpearl paused, breathlessly. "Compare that to the death of the Jumi race. Surely the Goddess could not want that to happen?"

Diana remained silent, but Rubens nodded vigorously in agreement. "How will you do it?"

Blackpearl knew; she had learned, centuries ago, and she had never forgotten. "We need to find the Sword. The Sword of Mana. If anyone can find it, a Jumi can."

Diana was coming around to the idea, she saw. "This is… very dangerous," she said quietly. "I am not sure how well the idea will be taken."

"We should keep it between us," Blackpearl agreed.

"But how can we let you leave without arising suspicion?" the Jumi leader wondered.

Rubens cleared his throat. "I think I see an answer," he told the women. "Diana, you will say… that Blackpearl has been expelled from the city for disagreeing with you, over your policies, over Florina, over both."

Diana looked shocked at the suggestion, but Blackpearl only nodded thoughtfully. She thought she saw where Rubens was going with this.

"Think about it, Diana," he told his doubting lover. "The people want some sort of action anyway. They want a scapegoat, the more powerful the better, and Blackpearl will be too far from here to suffer repercussions herself. It will make you look like you did _something_, even though there is really nothing you _can_ do. As for Blackpearl… she is free to pursue her mission, and she can't really do anything for her guardian here anyway. There are no enemies. Florina's danger is on the inside of herself."

Diana sat still for a long moment. "Has it really come to this?" She leaned against Rubens, closing her eyes wearily.

Blackpearl exhaled sharply. "I don't know what to say to that," she replied. "Perhaps it was there from the start. Perhaps the very nature of who we are puts us in situations with no true answer. But I can't bring myself to give up on the Jumi. Can you, Diana?"

"I suppose not," the leader said nonchalantly, as if they were discussing the weather rather than the future of their race. Not indifference; it was simple exhaustion, Blackpearl could see. Diana tapped her chin thoughtfully, a familiar nervous gesture. "Florina will need a knight. I suppose Alexandra will be willing to take over for a while?"

"I seriously doubt she'll argue with you much on that one," Blackpearl said dryly.

"We will need to keep you in touch, somehow," Diana continued.

"I can do it," Rubens assured her. "We've known each other long enough to trust each other."

Diana pondered that. "It's ideal, really," she finally said. "Rubens can leave the city more easily than I myself, but I will always be able to find you."

"Should we set up dates, times, to meet?" suggested Blackpearl.

"No need," replied Diana. "You will know when you need to meet," she said, touching her core, and Blackpearl nodded slowly. She pondered a moment. "I think, perhaps, there might be a little more we can do… A guardian can only be bonded to one knight, but it may be possible to bend the _residue_ of a bond, somewhat…"

Blackpearl caught on. "So Rubens and I could sense each other."

Diana nodded. "It will be very faint, and if we were not Lucidia, I doubt we would have the strength to achieve it. Even so, we must tell no one about this, though. Who knows who would try to bond outside a pair? We must preserve the structure."

"Understood. As for a place to meet…"

"The Tower of Leires," Rubens decided. "Safe, and hard to find for anyone not Jumi."

Blackpearl felt an ironic chill at that. Her two close friends knew which stone her core was from, but she had never told them how she got it, who she had been before. That part of her history was finished by the time the Jumi city was formed, and was lost in the ancient past that she could barely remember; but one thing a Jumi never forgo, was how the core was acquired. _The Tower of Leires_. There was something else besides the core she felt she should remember… but it wouldn't come to mind.

"When will you leave?" Diana interrupted her thoughts.

Blackpearl looked out the window, to the sights and sounds of Etansel beyond. "As soon as possible," she replied, feeling a pang at the thought of losing what had been her home for so long. But she knew what she was going to. "There is no reason for me to stay, anymore. All our hope is out there, somehow. I can only pray that I will find it."

She let herself reach out to the soft thrum of Florina's core. It never showed fear. The Clarius always believed what must be, would be.

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The announcement would be made once she was out of the city. That was what they had agreed on.

But there was one person, at least, to whom she owed a proper goodbye.

She made her way through the city, a part of her distant and numb. Barely acknowledging with a nod the other Jumi who greeted her, she ascended the steps to the chamber of the Clarius, every step a journey by itself. She wondered how long it might be before she climbed those steps again.

Florina sat by her window, the sunlight barely adding color to her pale face. "You should be lying down," Blackpearl told her reflexively.

"I am tired of lying down." There was no petulance from Florina, just a simple statement of fact.

Lady Blackpearl, knight to the Clarius for hundreds of years, suddenly found herself in a position where she had absolutely no idea what to say to her guardian. She felt as awkward as one of the younger Jumi coming for an audience with the idolized symbol of the Jumi. Yet, she observed in a distant way, that same symbol was a fragile girl, still young in a way despite the years that had gone by, she seeming painfully mortal despite it all.

Florina did not even need to turn her head. "You're worried about something."

Blackpearl could only draw a deep breath, and force courage from some untapped reserve. There was no leading up to this. "I came to say goodbye."

"Oh?" Florina said, now turning to look at her knight with tired brown eyes, eyes that spoke the question contained in that one word.

"Diana and I feel that it is necessary to find the Sword of Mana," Blackpearl said plainly.

"But you don't want anyone else to know," Florina finished, her knowing expression sparing Blackpearl a full explanation. "The Sword of Mana, to wake the Goddess. Because if Mana was not scarce, our cores would be able to draw what they needed, and our tears would no longer be so limited." The Clarius turned momentarily out the window again. "That seems the right idea."

That was as close to an admission as Florina would ever give that she could not survive otherwise. Blackpearl could only nod. Florina rose from her seat, slowly, like an old, arthritic grandmother. Something Jumi never generally had to experience. "I know you will find the answer," she said, looking upwards at her taller knight. She reached up to place one finger on Blackpearl's core, to touch the bond with which no other bond could compare.

"It's dark sometimes," the Clarius murmured, "like today, giving off no light. But it is all part of the whole." She met Blackpearl's eyes. "No matter. You will find your light, and the way back here."

Blackpearl had that odd feeling of tears coming to her eyes, but of course, there were none. Vaguely, she wondered if she had ever cried in her life. To be sure, her oldest memories were hazy, but even so, she could not recall a single time tears had dripped from her eyes.

It didn't mean she hurt any less, and it was with a heavy heart that she turned to begin first steps of her journey away from home.

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Esmeralda had only been in the Jumi city for a handful of years, but already she found it felt like home.

However hard it had been to find the stones that now graced the chests of she and her three sisters, it was nothing compared to the _decision_ to find them. The family had been living in Forcena, the capital itself, and had plenty of years to watch the Empire become increasingly more corrupt and twisted. They had begun to dream of having their chance to bring the Empire down, back to what it had been in ages past. The sisters agreed that if it was going to be done, it would be something they would all do together.

Their first thought was to find the Earth Stone, but whatever pieces had remained at the south end of the Empire were now long gone. Esmeralda only found out much later that many of them had sunk into the city of Etansel itself.

It was an aunt, native to the Lorant Hills, that had finally told them a story of a wind stone that had once graced those peaks. She had thought it was a myth, and Esmeralda and her sisters had embarked on their journey with nothing more than a sense of adventure.

But they had found it… shards of a stone, deep in a cave high in the mountains, glowing softly green, and largely untouched.

Working together, their cores had made them lucky enough to find the city of the Jumi, the city that was now the city of their own kind. The Jumi were rarely found anyplace else, nowadays; it simply wasn't safe. Esmeralda would have preferred to remain in her homeland to fight, but there would be time enough for that.

She saw Lady Blackpearl coming down the steps from the Clarius's chambers, and she bowed slightly, respectfully, but Blackpearl barely seemed to register the gesture, seemingly preoccupied.

She barely knew the woman; she didn't need to. Lady Blackpearl was a legend, something to aspire to, Esmeralda thought. Though she felt slighted, as her sisters had been decreed knights as Blackpearl herself was, while she had been declared a guardian.

It had been Florina who had made that choice, even though it had chafed on her. "Perhaps, with time," the Clarius had told her, "you may change that path."

"But I don't want to be a guardian!" she had cried. "I want to fight!"

Florina had looked at her then, tired eyes meeting hers. "You misjudge, Esmeralda. Strength may not be your avenue, but truly, being a guardian is the harder part by far. We all do what Mana asks us to."

Well, if it wasn't strength she had, she could damn well make up for it elsewhere. She may not be much of a fighter, but she had the strongest piece of the stone of the four they had found, and all the Mana and magic inside it. She would find her own way to fight.

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Oddly, after she packed her few things, it was not the Jumi, nor the city, nor any friends that weighed on Blackpearl's mind.

It was the Tower of Leires that bothered her, for reasons she could not fathom. That tower was an a famous source of poorly-understood Mana energy, and she had not been there since obtaining her core. There was something about the idea that bothered her immensely, as if she didn't know what she would find there, or what the Tower would think of her.

It hit a frightened nerve. Often, she felt as if she had long since lost herself, and ever since, had always become who the Jumi needed her to be. It wasn't a bad thing, necessarily; she had always been strong in desire and purpose, and she had a place that she understood. But one odd nerve of her wanted to find something more, wanted to explore the world outside that the Jumi did not have the luxury of knowing, wanted to have the spirit to appreciate it once again. A pain that had been there so long she was accustomed to it, except that every now and then it made itself known once again.

It wasn't easy, always being strong. In that respect, she envied Florina, to be able to be soft, and gentle, and still keep the sense of wonder towards the world that she felt she had long since lost.

But she had too many responsibilities for that. The Clarius was the one who kept the faith of Mana, while she, the knight, took the brunt of the bad feelings. She had done that for six so far, and a little of each, of their hopes, their pain, and sometimes more, was with her still.

Speaking of… "Blackpearl!" came a familiar voice as she walked down the corridor.

She turned to see Sappho striding towards her, a tall man with hair of a watery blue, and a temper that sometimes lurched out of an otherwise icy exterior. Someone she had been hoping not to see before she made it out of the city. He stopped bare inches away from her, looking her straight in the eye.

"Expelled? What sort of nonsense is this?" he demanded, in a tone few would take with her.

She lifted her chin primly. "It is not for us to question Lady Diana's wisdom," she told him. "And how did you hear about it before anyone else?"

He grabbed her by the shoulders, a little roughly, as he did whenever he became emotional. Not that she would break so easily. "I hear things easily enough. Give it up, Blackpearl. I don't believe that for a second. And even if _could_ let myself think that Diana would make a decision like that, I know you so well that you can't lie to me. What are you up to?"

Blackpearl tugged her shoulders away slightly, his grip still firm, before she decided it wasn't worth the effort. "Don't presume that I am going to tell you everything I am up to. I have not been your knight for a long time."

"Ha! You being my knight is hardly what I remember you for." He looked at her intensely, releasing one shoulder to trace the outline of her core. It was especially gray today, and the color swirled slightly at his touch. "You know as well as I do that the bond between knight and guardian never dies completely, and I can always find you again through this." Two fingers traversed the surface of her core softly, and Blackpearl tensed at that intimate touch.

Jumi no longer sought love with those not of their kind; it was virtually forbidden, only leading to hurt, and loss. _But between two of their own kind, it was a pain all its own_, she thought, for it followed them forever.

"I used to call you Princess, remember?" he said softly.

"Don't call me that," she replied reflexively. It was an old nickname, a tender one, and it bothered her now, almost embarrassing. She did pull away from him then. "I have to go," she told him simply. "I have to get ready to leave." She turned, and did not look back.

Sappho did not follow, and she barely registered Alexandra in the shadows watching her depart as well.


	30. Legends: Fate

**30. Legends: Fate**

Blackpearl stood before the raven decorated gate, considering. She had been wandering the forest for some days, waiting for just the right moment; but tonight, all six moons were out, and she knew it was time.

The Tower was ready for her.

She knew this place, but it was only the vague sense of remembering, nothing specific. She knew she had to come here, and that was all that drove her. It was strange, really, some of the memories from hundreds of years ago were as sharp as day, but the more recent past seemed to be muddled in her brain. There was something in there about a young knight, and she knew that not so long ago, she had the answers, but they had slipped away somehow.

It was irrelevant, anyway. It was one of those things that happened being Jumi, lifetimes upon lifetimes of memories, and it was bound to happen that some would slip away. It had never bothered her before, and it didn't now. She knew what really mattered. She was here to find three things: her guardian Florina, the traitor Alexandra, and the Sword that could save the Jumi. And it was here she could find some of the answers she needed.

Still, the tower pressed on her in a way that she could not remember it doing before. Previously, it had felt… welcoming… to her, if a tower could indeed be described to have emotions that way. Now… it felt… indecisive. It wasn't that it didn't want her there, but then again, it wasn't that it did.

The feeling only intensified as she headed through the doors. It weighed on her, quickly, and she had barely entered a few yards before the pressure became overwhelming, the air itself seeming to solidify, impeding her progress.

She paused, and reasoned it out. There was something in the Tower that did not want her there, as much as it had called to her.

She reached out with her core, to try and find out what the Tower wanted from her, and it… _connected_, she suddenly feeling as if she was a part of it. It sang to her, soothed her, and she let herself sink into the sensation. It made her delirious… it made her calm, in a way she could barely remember feeling, and she felt herself drifting away from herself somehow…

Pearl shook off her dreaminess, and forced herself to focus. She thought she had conquered that inclination to get lost in her own thoughts, but she had again, hadn't she? She tried to remember what she had been doing to get here, but nothing popped up to fill in the blanks. With the past empty, she turned to the present, and her eyes took in her surroundings.

The Tower of Leires. She was here again.

She wasn't exactly sure how she had come here, or why, but she was sure she had a good reason, and with that idea in her head, she headed towards the stairs, and began to climb.

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Home appeared on the horizon, and Ariesa prepared for the conversation she was dreading. Daena and Escad waited patiently as she pulled the twins aside.

"Lisa, Bud," she said seriously. "I want you to stay here."

The inevitable grumbles arose, but Ariesa pushed them aside. "No. Please. I am worried about what is really going on, and it's my fault, I haven't prepared the two of you enough."

Bud contemplated. "It's not your fault," he finally said. "Gaeus is right. I'll have to figure out myself how to become a great wizard." Lisa only nodded in agreement, and a thought occurred to Ariesa. She had been the better student of magic, but now, she wondered, if Bud didn't have a little extra something.

In any case, it made for little arguing, as the now-smaller party departed, much more subdued without the youthful energy to keep them motivated. They inched their way towards the moonlight forest, Ariesa trying to push it out of her mind until they reached the border, and she stretched one hand out to the trees as if to convince herself they were really there.

She was stalling, she knew, both eager and afraid as she took her first few steps into the thick canopy of trees, motioning the others to follow. Whereas Daena had led them through the forest earlier, Ariesa now found she had an odd sense of direction that she couldn't exactly explain, just a feeling, but a feeling she would have bet anything on it. It was as if the forest itself was speaking to her, and the others seemed content to follow her lead, as they trudged deeper into the forest.

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The tower of Leires loomed in the distance, its purplish reflection of the moonlight making the night seem even more inky behind it. Ariesa shuddered.

"Bad memories?" questioned Escad. He had heard plenty about this tower, but he had no reason to be _afraid_ of it. She, however, obviously knew something more.

"This is where we found Pearl the last time... I like to believe that it is only coincidence that brings her back again... but, the problem is, I think I know why." She would volunteer no more.

That was about the longest sentence he could get out of her, and he had been trying for days. Daena was still wary around him, despite having grown up with him, and the others they had dropped off at home had been only kids, so when he got sick of listening to his own thoughts, the golden-haired young woman was the last one remaining.

Well, she was young, definitely younger than he was, but he couldn't pin an exact age to her. There was something about her that seemed like a child, and something ageless. And she was often so quiet, she was no help at all when he tried to figure out what she was thinking.

Escad was mulling on that as he approached the Tower, when out of the corner of his eye he saw a crumpled figure near the entrance. Ariesa's sudden cry was enough to tell him who it was.

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Elazul was slumped against the raven-decorate gate, seeming to use all his strength to keep himself from falling over completely. Wordlessly, Ariesa took his head in her hands, his expression not changing, but a glint of gratitude in his blue eyes.

He felt weak to her still; she wasn't sure she knew _how_ she could tell, but she _knew_, as if seeing him barely propping himself up on one knee didn't show it enough.

"It's nothing," he brushed her off. She ignored him.

"I expected better from a Jumi Knight," she teased, but her joking hit a nerve. "Don't call me that," he said brusquely. "To a Jumi Knight, the life of his guardian is more precious than his own. I failed to protect my guardian. That is why I have no right to call myself a knight."

"You didn't have a choice in the matter. You _would_ have put her life before yours," she whispered to him. "That's what you told me. Don't the same rules apply to you?"

He had no answer for that. She helped him up, he leaning on her perhaps more than he wanted the others to see.

Elazul turned slightly, whispering into her ear so only she could hear. "Pearl must be in there, I can feel it," he said. "Will you go with me?" Both his tone and expression pleaded, in a way she had never seen on him before.

"Of course," she responded, turning to the others, only to have Elazul pull her urgently back.

"No," he murmured urgently to her. "Not everyone. It's dangerous to Pearl. Just us. I would go by myself, but... I think I need you too," he finished.

Ariesa remembered him telling her how the tower had twisted and turned to keep him away from Pearl. _Would they have any luck together? What did the tower want from Pearl, anyway?_ "Okay," she replied, forcing the confidence into her voice for his sake. "Just a moment."

He clung to the gate unsteadily, as she stepped aside to talk to the others. "I think it's just the two of us from here on."

Escad looked ready to object, but Daena cut in first. "I think you're right. There's something…" She paused. "I think the Tower doesn't want us inside."

"We'll meet back at my house soon," Ariesa promised. A quick embrace of her friend, and they were gone, the forest seeming to close behind them. She turned back to Elazul, the forest now quiet, no life to be seen except for the two of them.

He had hoisted himself up, and was standing straighter, prouder. She wondered. Perhaps it was not physical pain that was holding him back, but rather the pain of the loss? She hadn't really understood what had happened with Pearl in Mekiv, but she knew Elazul well enough to realize that Pearl _was_ his life, and the thing first and foremost on his mind right now.

"It didn't let you in this time, did it?" she said softly.

"No," he replied, and his expression told her that her guess was right. "But perhaps… with you here…" She nodded.

Side by side, they approached the doors, they opening like a yawning pair of jaws to let the two inside.

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Whatever had kept Elazul back before wasn't stopping them now, and they quickly climbed the tower without incident, soon finding themselves facing the same ornate iron door as before.

"I heard the door of fate opens only to one who knows the person inside." Elazul noted.

"You got in there easily enough last time," she replied.

"Yes, but... I think there's someone I don't know in there this time." He looked pointedly at the doors. "One way to find out."

Ariesa stood back while Elazul tugged with all his might, but the heavy iron doors remained firmly shut. He gave another mighty heave before pounding on the door in frustration.

"Resist me, will you?" he shouted angrily, before a spark seemed to go out of him. "All this time… all the memories I have of her… and I still don't know enough for her to let me in." He slumped once again, not in weakness but from simple sadness and frustration. "Pearl!" he called, anguished. "Why won't you let me in?! I am your knight!"

Ariesa put her ear to the door beside him, and it whispered to her. She almost started. It was the voice from her dreams, too faint for words to be made out, but she _knew_ nevertheless, and suddenly she saw in her mind... a golden-haired woman and a silvery-blond haired girl… She panicked, and it slipped away. Taking a deep breath, she let the memory gently resurface. It was hazy, unclear, but she knew it was there.

Holding it in her head, she pulled on the door, and it succumbed to her touch with no resistance. Elazul raised his head to look at her in surprise.

The expression on his face lasted only a moment, before he darted inside.

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The trail was getting steep. It wasn't too much for Bud, naturally, but he felt obligated to wait for his sister to catch up.

"Oof," Lisa gasped, coming up behind him. "What did you want me to haul all the way up here, anyway? I thought we already figured out there's no fairies here."

"They say a Wisdom lives here," Bud told her.

Lisa swiveled her head. "I don't see anything that looks live a big hill with a face," she said sullenly. "But the view is nice."

His sister had a point, Bud had to admit. From the cliff, they had a clear view down to the clear stillness of Lake Kilma. "It's like magic," he said, staring, distracted by the view.

"It _is_, in a way," a voice interjected. "The magic of Mana."

Bud turned around, yelping despite himself as he turned to face… a giant turtle.

"Mana is everywhere," the turtle continued, "if you only know to see it."

"Who…" Lisa stuttered awkwardly. "Who are you?"

The turtle chuckled. "Pardon, young ones. I am the wisdom Tote. I come from beyond the sea, where I have been hiding for centuries. I have seen many things, and I know Mana, the Goddess."

Lisa whispered. "Go, Bud, you wanted to ask him, right?"

"Ask me what?" Tote asked mildly.

Compared to the impression Gaeus had made on him, Tote was incredibly informal, and somehow, that made Bud feel even more awkward. "Well, Mr. Wisdom, sir," he began politely, "I'm trying to figure out how to be a great wizard. You know, to use magic better and stuff."

Tote chuckled. "Well, my son, for that, you need to understand Mana. Gaeus is right. You need a better teacher, someone more in tune with Mana," Tote mused. Bud suddenly wondered how Tote even knew of his trip to Gaeus, but held his tongue.

"What about me?" asked Lisa, a bit miffed.

"For you…" Tote trailed off for a moment. "Well, I think… you see things in an order, a pattern, and you only know to do things the way you are taught. Thee is nothing wrong with doing things that way, but eventually you will have to trust yourself to take things a little further." Lisa looked merely confused, and Tote chuckled indulgently. "You don't understand, do you? Well, let me put this another way. The Goddess will demand more of you than ever will your teachers." Lisa stayed silent, mulling the words over, and with that, he departed.

"Well, _that_ didn't help much," Lisa complained.

Bud himself wasn't so sure. The things Tote had said… it made him think maybe he wasn't just a failure of a wizard who got kicked out of school. "I'm sure he meant well," he said noncommittally, and sat by his sister.

Lisa leaned back on her elbows, and together, they looked over the lake. The surface was like glass, undisturbed by wind, and she finally sprawled forward to look at it below.

"If only we could stay here forever," Lisa sighed.

"Do you really want that?" challenged her brother, and Lisa seemed almost startled. She said nothing, but her thought showed clearly in her eyes. It was subtle, but it was there – the realization that things could not, would not, stay the same, not in the way she hoped. They had always been as close as a pair of twins could be, but things were changing around them.

Bud suddenly felt very bad for putting the doubt in his sister's mind, and he gave her a brotherly hug. "We'll never really be apart, I'll always be your brother," he told her, faking whatever manly confidence he had seen in Elazul and Escad. It worked well enough, though, as Lisa relaxed visibly, and together they settled into comfortable silence, watching the sun lazily descending towards the surface of the lake.

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"The twins aren't here," Daena noted. "And for once, they locked the door."

Escad was barely paying attention, merely surveying Ariesa's yard. One of those unbelievably irritating sproutlings wandered back and forth below the steps to the door. "The world is just an illusion!" it announced, and Daena was uncomfortably reminded of Irwin saying it was all just a dream. She did not like it.

"Well, there's a town over there, right?" Escad broke into her thoughts. "They must have an inn."

She nodded, and they turned to go. They made somewhat awkward company. Daena could bring herself yet to be entirely comfortable with him yet, despite having known him for more than half her life.

She let Escad handle the provisions for checking into the inn. The same giant canary she remembered from her last trip - when she came to visit Gaeus, when she thought there was hope for Matilda - was still running the place, her cackling voice still as grating as nails screeching on a board. She shuddered despite herself, and Escad looked over slightly to see what was bothering her.

Making their way up to the assigned room, they found it small but comfortable, and both stretched out on the twin beds, staring at the ceiling above. No conversation presented itself, and Daena found her thoughts wandering in circles in a very frustrating manner.

"To hell with it," Daena finally said. "Let's go to the pub." By way of response, Escad leaped up, as eager to leave as she was.

The pub was busy this time of evening, as the various citizens of Domina gathered for the dinner rush, and it took several minutes for Rachel to buzz by with their drinks. Escad ordered another right off the bat, then downed his own beverage. Daena looked on primly before taking several big gulps of her own cocktail.

For a long time, they sat there in silence, watching the town of Domina at its leisure.

"We don't have much reason to go back to Gato," Escad finally blurted out.

Daena knew he was right; they could not get into the temple for some weeks yet. "But what will happen when we do?" she asked. Escad did not give an answer. Maybe he didn't have one.

In the dim candlelight of the tavern, she snuck a glance at him contemplatively. Was he all that she had once made him out to be? He was supposed to be the Holy Knight of Gato, free of impure and distracting emotions, and as a child learning to become a defender of the Temple itself, she had looked up to him a little bit. But adulthood had a way of changing a great many things, and she realized she didn't have the slightest idea what he had thought about or felt for Matilda, nor what feelings Matilda had returned.

She tried to look at him objectively this time; he was an attractive man, yes, but also mysterious, withholding, and confusing. But for the sake of Matilda's memory, for the sake of Gato itself, she had to try and understand him.

"Gato," she mused out loud, following the last of her thoughts. "Matilda would have wanted us to see to it for her."

"You think?" Escad responded abruptly. "What are you trying to say?"

Daena took a sip of her cocktail, steeling herself for what she wanted to say. "I mean," she began, "that we should be putting the past behind us." Escad leaned in, interested, and that gave her encouragement to continue. That, and the third cocktail she was sipping. "It's only the two of us, now, and we have to carry on the responsibilities for the memories of those who were once our friends. Matilda… and Irwin as well," she finished, gauging his reaction.

A myriad of emotions crossed Escad's face, and she futilely tried to pick out some clues to his inner state. Finally, he opened his mouth. "Truce?" he asked, cocking one eyebrow.

"Truce," she agreed, clinking glasses with him, and grabbing Rachel for another round. It might be a bit awkward, a bit forced, but at least it was a start.

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Elazul entered the room with trepidation, Ariesa remaining silently a pace behind him. The soft thrum of Pearl's core pulled him forward, the sensation fainter than he was used to, but unmistakably her nevertheless. He wasn't sure what he expected to find, but it certainly wasn't the scene that unfolded before him.

Pearl stood there, on the near half of that odd reflective floor. Moonlight shone through the opening above, a stray beam lighting her pale face. And facing her, on the other half…

It was a woman Elazul had seen before.

A tall woman, clad in gray silks, eyes the same gray-blue as Pearl's. She had never introduced herself to him. She hadn't needed to, in a chance meeting in the desert, with a mysterious woman who was Jumi, but unwilling to let on more than that.

But as she lifted her head to meet his eyes, there was no expression, no recognition, nothing to indicate anything about him was familiar to her, and it gave him an odd, worried feeling. He stepped forward uncertainly. "Let Pearl go," he said, hoping his voice didn't waver.

Ariesa grabbed his arm, pulling him up short. "Elazul," she began, and he turned at the urgency of her voice.

"Elazul… they're both Pearl… I think, I don't know how to say it better. She was at Mekiv after you…" She paused, leaving the sentence unfinished. "I don't entirely understand myself."

_It can't be_, was Elazul's first thought, but as he opened his core, he could feel it, the faintest resonance, fainter than the muffled signal from Pearl, but there nevertheless. It was her, only _not_ her, at the same time; he could understand no better than that. Traces of semi-conscious memory drifted up, of the woman he had glimpsed for only a split second at Mekiv, barely registering her through the haze of pain.

The two Pearls faced each other across the carvings that decorated the floor, both seeming… insubstantial, as if each were only a possibility. The tall, harsh-seeming woman from his lonely past, and the small, delicate girl he knew and loved.

The tall woman turned to him. "Jumi knight, it is the truth. The mirror tells all," she said, motioning to the floor below. "The unguarded truth." Pearl, for her part, looked around somewhat wide-eyed, as if only half-there; Elazul knew that expression well. It always ended up with him running after her, trying to protect her, save her; but he wondered if this time that was to be more figurative than literal. "She is the lost moon, and she has come here, to the tower of the moon, to find that truth."

Elazul felt torn. He wanted to step towards her, to get between her and this strange woman who seemed to want to take her place, but somehow he knew that would be dangerous. To himself, but even more so for Pearl. The taller woman - Blackpearl, she had called herself? - looked down into Pearl's fearful eyes. Elazul found his feeling of dread growing more and more, and he was increasingly convinced that whoever she was, she was _not_ the same woman he had met before. That one had been determined and intimidating, but full of life. This one felt more like a mirage, a ghost… but how much of her was there at all? Did she have the power to make his guardian the ghost and she the reality?

Pearl, for her part, had scrunched up her face in fear and confusion, as of someone who didn't know how to make a dangerous decision, as Blackpearl's voice drifted over to her. "Memory is an artifact all its own, Pearl. Do you remember? You had once wanted to reach the Stratum of Clarius..."

"Yes..." Pearl murmured dreamily.

It _had _been her dream. He remembered her telling him so, countless years before. And he, silly boy that he had been, had fantasized about himself, Elazul, being the knight to the Clarius herself. That was before he was reduced to simply hoping that there could be other Jumi. And before he realized how important it was to care for Pearl, no matter who she was.

"It is time, then. You will release Florina, and you will become the Clarius yourself..." Blackpearl intoned solemnly.

"Yes..." Pearl seemed to be barely registering anything around her, she dreamily floating on that one word.

Blackpearl's features took on an evil grin. "Yes, _you_, Pearl. You will succeed the throne, and give your life to the race, bit by bit. Every tear you cry will give you pain, hurt you, take part of your own life away, as everyone else greedily steals it from you. But you will keep giving it anyway, giving your life until it is no more..."

"No..." Doubt crept into Pearl's voice, and a faint edge of fright that Elazul recognized in his core, reflecting his own apprehension.

"Listen to me..." Blackpearl urged, her voice a hypnotic siren's song, its low, velvet murmur lulling her audience. "It is the best way. It is the _only_ way. Without the Mana Sword, without Florina, you must persevere. You failed her, so it is only right you take her place. It is the sword, or you, Pearl, something must be sacrificed."

Pearl's face showed open anguish now. "No... I don't want to die..."

Elazul couldn't take it anymore. "Stop it!" he cried. "You call yourself a knight, why would you hurt a guardian this way?!"

Pearl did not turn at the sound of his voice, but Blackpearl swiveled to regard him with emotionless eyes. "Jumi Knight... This is a matter before your time, and it does not concern you. Be calm, you do not need to interfere."

"Interfere?!" Elazul was growing furious. "Pearl is my partner, my guardian, my life. And you tell me not to _interfere_?!"

"I do." Blackpearl leaned against her hammer with a casual nonchalance that Elazul knew indicated a warrior poised and ready to strike. He had adopted the same pose many times himself. "I'm warning you," she said, tension in her hand betraying the death grip she had on her weapon. "Back off, or you will die."

"I promised I would protect her. You won't be the one to take her from me," Elazul replied, all stubborn pride.

"Foolish death-seeker..." Blackpearl's eyes glittered deviously. "I do not wish to defile this place. Follow me below, and if you win, I will release her from her destiny."

"Elazul!" Pearl cried, snapping out of whatever trance she had been in. "You don't know her strength!"

"Elazul…" Ariesa cautioned, but he only shrugged her off.

Blackpearl looked at her counterpart impassively, the faintest touch of scorn as if wondering how Pearl had dared to speak. "Pearl, you just wait here. You don't need to worry; you don't need to think. Your destiny is written... You will feel the same pain Florina did soon enough." She strode past Elazul, stopping at the door to see if he would follow, and it was only concern for his guardian that kept him from charging her right then and there.

"Don't…" Pearl asked, pleadingly. "Don't go…" Ariesa inched slowly towards her, concern on her face.

"Pearl... It's alright... I'll come back for you..." Pearl collapsed into shaking, dry-eyed sobs. She was afraid for him, and she knew she could not heal him. "You are my guardian, and it is the duty of the knight to risk himself for his guardian. I would sacrifice my life for you if necessary," he told her, wincing slightly at the words, but knowing they were true.

Blackpearl smiled oddly. Was something funny about that?

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Ariesa found herself struggling to keep up with Elazul as he fled downstairs with single-minded determination. Blackpearl, or whoever it was, had disappeared in a flash, and there was no doubt where she had gone.

It puzzled her. Elazul was still struggling to process it, she could see, having been kind of out of it in Mekiv, but _she_ had been there, and seen Pearl turn into Blackpearl… yet something about this did not fit. Whomever Blackpearl was, in Mekiv, she had retained some element of what was Pearl. This… seemed to be another woman altogether.

They stopped abruptly into the first floor room, where their adversary waited, hammer calmly balanced on the stones. Elazul straightened to look her in the eyes. "We have a deal. I defeat you, you'll leave Pearl alone." He motioned Ariesa to stay out of it.

"I will... But she is mine anyway. She will come back to me on her own. Face it..." Blackpearl laughed then, a mirthful, rolling sound. "We are one and the same, you know."

Elazul's only response was to tense on his sword, and Ariesa wondered if he could truly fight her, if she was indeed the same as Pearl. But they had left Elazul's guardian upstairs…

The question was answered quickly enough, as Elazul dove forward and slashed.

His sandy cape whipped around with the momentum of his sword's swing, all his anger driven into it. Blackpearl calmly lunged slightly forward, balancing her weight as the shaft of her hammer blocked the swing. Not wood, that handle; the clang of metal on metal rang across the room.

Elazul pulled his sword back deftly enough to jab forward, a close move that Blackpearl could not block with her weapon, but shifted to avoid. It caught part of her lightweight coat with a rip of fabric, but the sword tore free with no damage to her person.

Blackpearl was on the defensive, the hammer much slower than the neat strokes of Elazul's lightweight sword, but that defense was impenetrable. Blow after blow was blocked by that immense weapon, and Elazul, pressing the attack, started to fumble in frustration, sweat beading on his forehead. The hammer was slow, but its owner was fast.

Finally, the pressure got to him and he executed an awkward half-slash with no real target. Blackpearl saw the opening, and her hammer met his sword at just the right point to knock it out of his hand and send it flying across the room.

That was all the invitation Ariesa needed, and she dove for Blackpearl from behind.

Her weapon was the same as Elazul's, and it would be no defense against that gargantuan hammer. But she had that split-second element of surprise, and her strike slashed across her opponent's chest.

It was just between core and heart, and awkwardly placed enough to do little more than graze her adversary. But it knocked Blackpearl off balance, and surprised, she turned, to see the new pest that was bothering her.

That split second was all the time Ariesa needed, as she sharply kicked the back of Blackpearl's knees. Reflex kicked in, and Blackpearl tumbled, hammer falling from her grasp. Ariesa grabbed the heavy weapon, and Elazul reached his sword, to place it quickly at Blackpearl's core.

"I don't want to damage you," he said quietly. "Jumi have suffered enough already."

He allowed her to rise, though neither gaze nor weapon ever wavered. "Most impressive, lapis knight," she congratulated him. "I give you the victory."

Pearl had in the meantime snuck in, and Elazul grabbed her with a last glare at Blackpearl, who stood there stone-faced.

Elazul was grim, clinging to Pearl with one hand and weapon with the other. "You see, she is mine."

"So you think. You may have her, for the moment." She addressed Ariesa. "He who cries for a Jumi turns to stone. Is it worth it, Ariesa? Better to stay away from us."

"What right do you have to tell me that?" Ariesa demanded, and Blackpearl started to fade.

In her absence appeared... Sandra. "A trick," breathed Elazul, not stepping away from his guardian.

"Every right, little girl," Sandra said, her tone insulting. "You don't even remember, do you?" she asked in Pearl's direction. Pearl only cowered slightly behind her knight. "Does it hurt, Pearl, to realize that I know the secrets of your past, and you don't? Damn tower wouldn't let me fight you at the top, though. At least it let me up this time."

Ariesa had her sword out in a second, and stepped slightly in front of Elazul, but Sandra seemed to read her thoughts. "Don't bother. I could have easily killed him, damaged as he is. He must have a powerful core to have survived. You'll have to tell me how that happened some other time," she cackled.

Ariesa did not move. "What happened here?"

Sandra waved at where Blackpearl had been standing. "A memory. Memories have power, and that is the power artifacts have, but Pearl holds it as close as any object in which it could be confined. It was easy enough, once she acknowledged the connection, to let her own guilt and fears express themselves. I barely had to help at all."

Ariesa hissed, but as she dove, Sandra was gone in an instant.

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A quick stop back at home revealed a darkened house, and a hastily scrawled note from Daena that they would be found at the inn. Despite their exhaustion, they made the short walk into town.

"I hope Bud and Lisa are okay," Ariesa fretted.

"I'm sure they are," Elazul told her soothingly. "They're more independent that you give them credit for."

The innkeeper recognized the trio easily enough, and was friendly as she responded to Ariesa's questions. "Yes, they've checked in," they were told, "but I think they are at the pub at the moment."

Sure enough, that's where they found Daena and Escad, surrounded by the remains of dinner and drinks.

Elazul sat at the table with Escad, Pearl remaining with them as some sort of civilizing influence, and Ariesa hurriedly pulled Daena away. She related the story as quickly as possible, with Daena' piercing questions filling in the bits and pieces she overlooked.

"Something bothers me," Ariesa finally concluded. "Blackpearl – or Sandra, or whomever – said the key was to get the Sword of Mana. How would we even do that?"

Daena pondered. "I'm not sure," she admitted, "but the jist of it is that Pearl is the only hope to save the Jumi, right? The only one left to become Clarius, and unless the Sword is found, she'll be used up quickly enough?"

"That seems to be the case," Ariesa acknowledged.

"Then maybe…" Daena tugged a cat-ear thoughtfully. "If we could find some Mana, it would buy Pearl some time, right?"

"I suppose so," Ariesa agreed.

"I'll ask Escad if he has a suggestion," Daena replied, and Ariesa looked at her doubtfully. "No, it's okay, we've been talking. You'd be surprised, he might know some things."

"Well," Ariesa asked dubiously. "If you think it is best. Perhaps you would both care to stay at my house while we sort things out?"

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Everyone had gone to bed. Pearl took the bed by the window, Daena took half of Ariesa's bed, and Escad had apparently holed up in some dark corner of her library.

Elazul seemed quite content to fall asleep by the fire.

He lounged on his side, staring into the fire that turned his blue eyes red, which seemed to go with his dark expression, propped up by the stone arm. His sword belt was discarded near him, but Ariesa wondered if he realized his fingers twitched towards it every once in a while. Not surprising. It was a part of him, and he felt as uncomfortable without it as most people would be without pants.

Other than that, he seemed comfortable enough. Ariesa wondered if the stone arm ever fell asleep. She herself had switched positions ten times in probably twenty minutes, stretching out, curling up, standing and going to the kitchen to look for a snack and realizing once she got there that she wasn't actually hungry and really needed a walk of three yards or so. Finally she had more or less settled with her arms pulling her legs to her chest, and her head rested on her knees as she observed her companion silently, the only sound the crackle of the flames.

Finally, she couldn't take the silence anymore. "What are you thinking about?" she asked, a silly question one asked when one didn't have any better ideas.

She was waiting for the rote answer of "Nothing," but Elazul responded with a different one-word answer: "Stones."

"Stones?" she asked, puzzled. "You mean, cores?"

"No, stones, crystals." He broke his staring match with the fireplace to look at her, but his eyes seemed far away. "I was remembering what you told me Daena said today about finding some Mana to save Pearl. You know lots of things, Ariesa, with all those books you read. You know how Jumi begin, right?"

"The race gathered together in the bejeweled city..." she quoted.

"No," he interrupted. "Not the race. How individual Jumi begin."

"What... what do you mean? Like who their parents are?" she asked, confused.

"You don't know. Too bad, would have spared me telling you a few details." She must have looked hurt at that, because he softened his tone a bit. "It's alright, most people don't know. Jumi aren't born Jumi."

"They aren't?" Ariesa's hand flew to her mouth, suddenly embarrassed. "No, sorry, I'll let you tell your story." She released her legs and rolled onto her stomach, propping her head up to give him proper attention.

After him almost dying on her, she was grateful for the casual comfort of this conversation, as he began.

"Jumi aren't born, they're _made_. Two Jumi can have children together, but the child is not a Jumi, just an ordinary person. It's a bit of Mana Stone that makes a Jumi. There used to be eight in the world, but they were shattered even before the Tree died. You could still find pieces for a long time, though, and like artifacts, they had Mana inside them; but it was not leftover Mana, the residues found in those artifacts. This was a bit of pure Mana, and as it turns out, just enough for a human life to handle.

"The Jumi started to multiply as people discovered the possibilities. This was when it was thought that Mana was gone altogether, and they were desperately searching for whatever Mana they could get their hands on. Many were grateful to have the chance to become what later became known as a Jumi.

"But things started to change. In the wars, both sides were greedy of the Jumi's powers, since most did not want to make the sacrifice to become Jumi themselves. Then the fragments of Stones became scarce, and there were fewer and fewer Jumi that appeared. People became jealous of the Mana the Jumi possessed, and that's when the hunting began."

Ariesa pondered that for a few minutes, working up the courage to ask the question he might or might not want to answer. Finally, she took the chance. "So how did you choose to become Jumi?"

She lost that gamble. He didn't really want to tell her, she could see, but he did anyway. "I didn't."

"Then how..." she began, before scolding herself. _No interruptions_, she had promised, so she sat patiently waiting for him to continue.

He rolled onto his back, his face looking up into hers. "My parents did it," he told her. "It's almost impossible to find a piece of Mana Stone now - they probably thought they were doing me a favor. Maybe they were, but it's a curse as well. I don't know why they did it. I never knew them."

Ariesa let one finger glide across his face. "So you don't know anything of your origins?" she asked softly. She let the fingertip slide down his neck to linger at his core, noting its gold-flecked blueness. Darker than his eyes, but no less piercing.

He reached up to pull her hand away. "You shouldn't do that," he said softly.

"Does it hurt?" she asked in sudden alarm.

"No," he murmured back. "Not in the way that you think." His left hand still clasped hers, and his look was... something else. His eyes held hers, but not in the way they had when she had first caught a glimpse of him; this was something new, something different. But just as on that day, he broke the gaze first.

"I know I was born somewhere in the Fieg Snowfields, but they were almost deserted even then, so I doubt I could find even a villager who might be able to tell me." He touched the core that was refracting the firelight, making glittering motes on the walls. "It seems safe to assume this was once part of the Stone of Ice."

Ariesa was perplexed. "Don't they sell ice stones in the shops?"

"Those are only ordinary crystals with some elemental power infused into them, good for forging weapons and armor, but they're not the real thing. This may have been from the Stone called the Stone of Ice, but it has all the elements in it, as does every piece of Mana Stone."

Ariesa wondered something. "What about Pearl, then?"

"I talked to her a little today, but I don't think she knows much herself what to make of things," Elazul admitted. "I mean, she was always hazy on her origins, but... all that means is that she's an older Jumi."

"She doesn't look old."

"That doesn't mean the same thing, with Jumi. It has to do more with the strength of the core, and how old you were when you accepted it. Although obviously," he motioned to himself with his free hand, "you won't stay a child. Pearl and I look about the same age along the regular human lifespan, maybe even a little younger, but doesn't mean much with Jumi."

"But... if she can't remember anything... does that mean she didn't choose for herself, either?"

Elazul gave an ironic smile. "Well, that's part of the dark side of being Jumi. Once you become one of the race, you start to forget who you were before. Those who want to keep their memories usually have to write them down, but many choose to forget once you realize you're going to outlive anyone who had any meaning to you, and most of their descendants as well."

"Do any of us know our origins?" she wondered. "So much lost in the wars. Was Pearl even always Pearl?" She left unspoken the suggestion; they both knew what she was saying well enough.

"I wonder myself," Elazul replied. "You can't sense her core, but... there's a lot of power to it, underneath that frail exterior. I thought for a little while maybe it was because she was destined to take Florina's place, but now I'm not so sure, and there's really nothing to do but see what she can tell us, once she remembers. It's strange to think that inside her dreamy head there may be the secrets of the Jumi itself. And that's when I started thinking of stones."

"So she must have accepted a piece of a Stone, but what does that mean for her now?"

"Same as for any other Jumi. She's tied to Mana, and without tears, there is nothing that can bring more of that to us. So we try to survive, fading out, unless..."

"Unless?"

Elazul sighed. "What Blackpearl, or Sandra, or whomever said, got me thinking. I heard once, about the Mana Sword she mentioned, that can break the barrier to the Goddess herself, and bring her back."

"I heard something like that too," replied Ariesa, thinking of Ishe.

"Then perhaps..." Elazul swallowed. "I think... Without the Goddess, Pearl would succeed as Clarius, and then die herself. How long can one Jumi carry the burden of tears for the race? Our only hope is the Mana Sword."

"And Pearl would be saved as well as the Jumi," Ariesa replied softly.

"And perhaps get her memories back as well," Elazul said. "What Sandra said, about memory being power, made me wonder... if it's as dangerous to waste old memories as Mana itself, if it drains the same way. The memories of herself that Pearl wants to recover… after all that happened, I think there are answers in there, answers we need.

"It makes me wonder how old she really is," he finished.

There was nothing left to say. They just lay side by side, staring into the fire, until Ariesa felt her eyes start to close.

Ariesa pulled off blankets and pillows from the couch, Elazul arranging them gently around her as he must have done for Pearl so many times before, settling himself down only once she was comfortable and already dozing. A passing fancy tempted her to wiggle closer to him, against him, but somehow just having him near her was enough.

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She thought it was Elazul shaking her awake, but as her eyes opened, she realized he lay in front of her fast asleep, and it was as dark as it had been before, maybe darker now that the fire was dying down. She turned up to find Escad, his hand on her shoulder.

He looked over at the sleeping Elazul; what he thought of that, his expression was unreadable. "Up late, I guess."

"We were talking," she replied, a little defensively.

"I figured. About the Stones, most likely." Ariesa did not answer. "Did he tell you they were shattered?" She nodded slightly. "He doesn't know the half of that. They are growing once again."

"How do you know?"

"I have my ways," he replied. "But even one of the Stones could buy Pearl some time. That's what you want, isn't it?"

_Not the Sword?_ she wondered. _But any chance was worth it_, she thought, thinking of Pearl's fright at the tower of Leires, of the uncertain destiny that awaited her. "It is," she admitted.

"Then let's go," he told her.

"I'll wake the others," she said, turning towards Elazul, but Escad pulled her away roughly.

"No others," he told her. "I must warn you, this is a darker way to go, and we shouldn't involve others. Especially that one - " he said, pointing to Elazul. "Taking his core with us would be disastrous."

He caught her doubting look. "Do you still want to go?"

Ariesa took a deep breath. "I'll do whatever it takes to help Pearl," she told him.

"Then we go now," he told her.

"In the middle of the night? It's freezing outside." She stretched out her hands to the fire, shivering at the thought.

Escad only laughed. "It's going to be a lot warmer where we're going."


	31. Secrets: Dragons

**Author's Note: **I don't celebrate Christmas, and I'm too sick to leave the house (ACHOOO!), so that means lots of writing got done!

One thing I think I should clarify, before anyone gets driven nuts. You remember how at the very beginning, I told you that the "Secrets" chapters were not in chronological order? Well, let me clarify some things. Chapters 13, 15, and 27 follow each other chronologically. THIS chapter (and parts of chapters 9 and 19) overlap the same time period. Same series of events (fairie wars, first round), but different scenes and different POVs. If you're still lost, PM me and I'll help you out.

After this, I think I'll be done with this series of events. There is a second part to the fairy wars, taken up in chapter 35, but there is a gap of ten or twenty years in between, so it will be nicely separated from the chapters mentioned above.

Enjoy!

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**31. Secrets: Dragons**

Aliota looked in the distance contemplatively. "Your daughter," she said. "Shayla has some of you, some of my uncle, and some that is uniquely herself."

Carlie ingested that thought. It was true; though her daughter reminded her a bit of Aliota as well, Shayla's cousin through her father Elliott. Aliota, who was now queen of Rolante in both name and truth now that her mother Lise was more or less retired.

"Mother named me for Elliot, you know?" Aliota continued.

Carlie smiled at the mention of her beloved second husband, now passed on. "It's the sort of thing Lise would do." She herself had named her children for her nearest and dearest; her equally adored first husband, who had not lived to the birth of their son; the parents who had left her when she was young; and the friends who lived on still.

One more thing completed the similarity between the cousins. Shayla and Aliota both had that luminescent, silver-blond hair that was an odd outcrop that seemed to appear in both the Rolantic and Wendelic heritages occasionally. It made them look even more closely related; Shayla could have passed for Aliota's daughter in a pinch. The illusion was magnified by the fact that her daughter's elven roots meant she aged very slowly, and the twenty-five-year old looked fifteen, if that.

The Queen of Rolante, however, was near fifty, though still retaining as much beauty and presence as Lise always had. She sat on the rocks next to Carlie, a gracious host here, on the summit of the mountain that towered over the kingdom. "Why did you only bring her?" she asked, a bit puzzled. "I thought for sure more of your children would be interested in meeting a dragon."

It was a legitimate question. "She seemed the most inclined," Carlie answered; it had surprised her that Shayla had leaped at the chance to come, but the rest of her siblings had held back. "I even left her brother Leroy back in Wendel, and you know how close those two are, almost like twins."

Aliota accepted that, and together they sat to watch Shayla.

Not Shayla, so much, but the dragon. Flammie rarely showed herself nowadays, but apparently had chosen to make a special appearance for the High Priestess of Wendel, and Shayla was laughingly bonding with the great white dragon who had taken Carlie and her friends to the Holyland.

They did not share a language, of course; but perhaps they didn't need to. The dragon playfully nuzzled Carlie's daughter, who wrapped her arms around the creature's head, petting her white-furred snout. A breeze, a whisper of the famous winds of Rolante, stirred up to ruffle the scalloped border of Shayla's white dress. Two young people, laughing together.

Aliota stood and moved towards the two with that graceful strength that marked the Amazons, embodied no better than in their queen, and Flammie _chirred_ slightly at her approach. Carlie stood, but remained at a respectful distance some yards back. The Amazon Queen reached one hand gently to Flammie's snout, and the white dragon uttered something pleasant, yet uncomprehensible.

Aliota pretended to understand. "Perhaps she is trying to tell you she is the dragon princess?" she asked Carlie's daughter with a hint of teasing. "Like you yourself? Maybe you have something in common."

Shayla pouted slightly, in that was that girls do just as they have barely reached adulthood. "I'm no princess."

Aliota squatted the slightest bit to let her look her cousin in her eyes. "Do you really think it is so much a matter of birth?" she told her younger cousin. "Do you think what a princess is?"

Shayla did not respond, but her brow furrowed in a sort of vacant concentration as she searched her head for an answer.

Aliota waited for one long moment, before answering. "It's about pride, and dignity, and thinking of others besides you. It's about holding it together when needed, without forgetting how to cry for what is lost."

At the last, Flammie squealed, a piercing, poignant sound that needed no translation.

Shayla nearly jumped at the dragon's wail, reaching for her snout to soothe her, and only speaking after the echoes of the howl were finished. "I never cry," she said softly.

"It's true, she doesn't," Carlie interjected. "Never. No matter what she loses."

Aliota straightened once again. "Once, we lost Rolante, and my mother cried as she never had before," she told Shayla. "Remember, whatever you lose, cry for it, grieve for what is gone, and hope for what may come again."

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Vadise was old enough to remember a great many things.

She knew she had been around for many years. The time did not matter; years had little meaning to who and what she was. She was a dragon, a creature born from the Goddess herself.

That didn't mean she had no sense of past or future. She had once been young, as she herself marked so, and involved with things, but as she had aged some, she had retreated, lost, detached, separated from the Goddess, whose death burdened the dragons as much as it had all of Her creatures.

She had once chosen to be part of the world; now she felt she had little choice but to stay back. The fairies – the ones that should have been closest to the Goddess, even more so than any dragon - were more lost than she would ever be, weakened, misdirected. Vadise found it intriguing that they were even able to fight in the way humans did. It showed how different things had begun, since the Goddess died. The humans now had created silly legends of flammies and dragons that bore little on the reality; the humans had not changed, but they had forgotten, and that perhaps made them the most changed of all.

She remembered, most of all, that day, the day of the Death of the Goddess. A day burned into her very soul. She had felt the _wrench_, felt Her death with every bit of herself, leading her human companions forward through the Holyland, only to find a tree that had already been destroyed, even as she hoped against hope there was something to salvage.

Perhaps there was. The humans had lived on. The youngest one of those she had known had lived to become the High Priestess of the Goddess, the new Goddess that had not yet awoken, and had brought her daughter to meet her above Rolante. It had been years ago, but she remembered it with the luxury of memory that did not fade. She had greeted Carlie's daughter, feeling the _power_ of the young woman, something of inner strength and dedication as she had seen in Shayla's mother and aunt. The familiarity resonated with her, exhilarating and painful at once. There, above the mountains of Rolante, she had realized that not all was lost, and the winds of the kingdom spoke to her in the language of Mana, allowing her to imagine and dream.

It was a scene she now missed dearly. Vadise had eventually chosen to separate herself from the rest of the world, as much as she used to love flying over Rolante. But with the wars, it seemed the only safe place she could find was in the Forest of Wonder.

Maybe it was that it had been the home of the Tree Stone, but even though that Stone was as shattered and useless as the rest of them, somehow the forest where the elves had once made their home preserved the warmth of Mana in a way no other place could imitate. She found herself separated from the wars of human and fairie that wracked the world, left in pleasant solitude in the enchanted forest.

She expected nothing in particular from the woods except this peace; so she was surprised one day when she found it.

She had been wandering the forest, absorbed in the sweet reminiscence of Mana that it gave her, when she felt the pull, at first so subtle she might have missed it; but as she followed, it becoming stronger, beckoning her in a way that she had not felt in so long, that she could barely remember the sensation. It lured her to a small glade, sheltered by the trees from easy access or open view, trees that had overgrown its home so completely that she could only slide her neck inside to see it.

It was nothing more than a sliver of a crystal, but there was something about it that distinguished it, something ephemeral yet ancient. She thought it might have been another piece of the shattered Tree Stone, and she craned her neck to look a bit closer. Her muscles complained, aching with the stretch, but she ignored them, looking both with her eyes and with her soul, and in a split second, she realized the truth.

It was a new Mana Stone.

_How did this happen?_ she asked herself. There was so little Mana in the world now, and even that so unpredictable, that for it to have crystallized on its own must have been an infinitesimal chance. But she stared at it for unknown hours, unable to tear away, and could not escape the facts.

She contemplated the possibilities that day, and for many days after that, only to find the conclusion inevitable. This was the work of the new Goddess, however paltry her power might be still.

One could only assume that if one was forming here, there were others as well, the cages of Mana slowly reforming to shape their elements once again; but just as the Goddess herself, vulnerable in their natal forms. She had to find a way to protect them, to allow them to grow as the Goddess herself was growing.

_Anuella_, she thought. The mage could certainly find a way to help defend the one Stone; but what of the others that must be forming as well? There was no way she could take care of them all on her own.

She spent many more days, but when she realized the answer, it was as clear to her as if the Goddess herself had spoken. It was entirely unprecedented, but made sense nevertheless. The dragons were as tied to Mana as the rest of the world, few in number but great in strength, and while others fought and died, they lived on.

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Vadise let her head rest on her forelegs, her large blue eyes wide open as she surveyed the others of her kind.

They had chosen to meet at the place known as Queen Altena's hill, the name now more memorial than honorific as Altena rapidly receded to become just an ancient memory. Still, Mana had seeped into the land deeply here, and the power that she could still feel at this sacred spot was the reason it had been selected.

Argot strode around the icy mountaintop, proud as always. The silver-white dragon was all arrogance, something she had never failed to notice. He called himself "King", but no one challenged it. It did not mean the same thing as when the humans used it. Argot had a _presence _notable even among the dragons, a determination, a drive to make something of the world without Mana.

But she was older than he, and she never let him forget it.

"Flammie," she heard her brother's voice. Not a true brother, naturally, but Akravator had been her closest confidant for as long as she could remember. He used the name the humans had given her; her real name did not translate well into that tongue. He sidled up to her, wings twitching slightly before folding.

"You still call me that?" she uttered, in broken Mana tongue. "Times change. We learn this human language now, you must say my name that way. It is difficult, but for the sake of speaking with the ones called Jumi, we must learn. It will get easier, I promise." She found herself thinking of Carlie's daughter; a young woman she now saw only rarely, now that Mana had taken Shayla – or Blackpearl – another way.

Akravator looked at her affectionately. "_Vadise_," he said, lapsing into dragon-tongue; despite her protests, it thrilled her to hear her name properly pronounced once again. "So much has changed, but which name do you want?"

"None," she replied, brushing off the brotherly nuzzle of his neck, and switching back into human language. "There are bigger problems. The tree grows, yes, but no one protects it, save the pathetic barrier that barely protected Her from Anise. Her Mana flickers, and the humans abuse it. If we do nothing, perhaps the tree will not survive to return the Goddess, yes?"

Akravator looked chastened. "So then, sister, what now?"

Argot turned his gargantuan body towards her. Those black eyes pierced as Shade never could, stark against his pale and luminescent body. "Yes, Vadise, what now?"

Was he asking _her_? An exceptional indication, to be singled out that way; from Argot, that could mean anything, or everything. Nevertheless, the dragons assembled were now looking at _her_, following the lead of their "king" the same as any human would. And that king had turned to her. She took a breath, inhaling the Mana as much as the air, both just as much life to her.

With trepidation, she raised her voice. "We should be so lucky as to remain removed, yes? As before, the creatures of the Goddess, under her protection. But times, they change, and we change as all does."

Murmurs through the crowd, wings flapping and necks wavering in response to her statement. It did not surprise her when Jajara was the one who finally stepped forward.

Jajara was always the most beautiful of the dragons, more than even Argot, a golden-scaled epitome of dragon perfection. And he knew it; it only added to his pride. He spoke to her in a broken dialect of human language, but nevertheless, his voice was much more accomplished in the tongue. "The new goddess will come, and we must survive, and it is only left to us to figure out how. Propose, Vadise."

It was a challenge, but not one she was unprepared for. It was only one phrase she had to utter. "The Mana Stones."

A stir ran through the dragons, and she waited as they settled. She could make out no voices, but she could guess well enough what they were saying. She had already told them of the slivers of Mana holding the tenuous power of the new Goddess. They had pondered the subject some, naturally, but had always turned away from the topic until now - out of fear more than anything, she suspected.

Quiet finally descended, and she continued. "The faeries are fighting to survive, stranded without their link to the Goddess, and the elemental spirits are too weak still," she continued. "There is not enough Mana for others to perform this duty. The dragons are the only who can protect the new stones, and must until the Goddess comes again, for hundreds of years still."

The only one who dared meet her gaze was Bahamut, the silent, violet-silver wyvern. He was the first of the dragons, rumored to be the creator of all the others; some said as old as the Goddess herself, and his eyes had the look of ancient wisdom, yet hid absolutely what he was thinking.

Argot bent to look at her. "Eight stones, forming," he told her. "Who watches each? For all time, we have called you princess, for your wisdom is precious to us. So, Dragon Princess, it is your decision to make."

She had nearly forgotten her ancient nickname. Princess, not Queen; she was precious, but often seen as fragile and weak nevertheless, incomplete and dare she say, possibly incompetent. She had courage and wisdom, but found she doubted herself. But a glance at Argot's expression steeled her, and frightened though she was, she knew no one could make this decision better.

It made her first words easier. "You, Argot," she replied. "You must have the stone of light." His reptilian chest puffed slightly with pride, and she knew she had made the right decision. It gave her confidence for the next choices.

Before she could open her jaw, however, Bahamut interjected. "If you please, Vadise," he said, quietly intimidating in his uncanny way. "I would care to take the stone of the Moon."

Vadise nodded, certain she knew why. Bahamut belonged to that invisible void where the moon showed, where things were born and disappeared with equal ease. It was the counterpart to the Tree element she wished to guard; a poorly understood opposition, in many ways more complex than the simple distinction of dark and light. Bahamut was the one most suited to guard that precious, mystical element, to keep it in balance with her own. "Agreed," she said.

"And you will take the stone of wind?" asked Argot. "It was always a favorite of yours."

"No," she replied, memories suddenly paining her. The peaks of Rolante... the winds rustling through her scales and feathers... the Amazon queens who came to her. Long memories, belonging to a long time ago. Rolante would never be the same after the wars, and she could not cling to that memory. "I will give the wind stone to my brother."

Akravator flickered his wings. "You would have me go to Rolante?" Not angry, merely inquiring.

"No," she replied dismissively. "Take it wherever you may. Find a place of safety."

"And what then, do you watch, sister?" he asked.

"No question," she replied. "The stone of Tree."

The murmur was ever more audible this time, but Vadise did not care. She knew why she would take Tree for herself; she desired it above all others, trusted no one else to do so. It was the closest to the Goddess, in a way.

But none argued, as she chose the rest. "Tiamat," she addressed the small, lithe blue dragon. "You will take the stone of water."

Others would perhaps see it as a surprising choice. She was one of the younger dragons, capricious and easily distracted, perennially dissatisfied where no one saw fault. Some might see that as weakness, and Tiamat herself often did, but Vadise recognized the truth; she was as liquid and mutable as water itself, and had the peculiar trait of contemplating subtle changes and gradations where most saw a single color.

Tiamat cocked her slender, graceful neck in contemplation, still one step shy of uttering the sort of wisecrack that would cut straight through the mood. This time, composure and maturity won out. "Chaotic," she said, musing. "More so than even fire."

"True. You must understand that to keep your Stone in balance, not to let it descend into chaos," Vadise advised. Fire and water… an unusual match in that both had element of order and disorder, making it not the most powerful opposition as much as the most… explosive, the most threatening to the Goddess.

The young dragon contemplated Vadise's advice. "I like it," she finally said, a bit flippantly, in the way that the young often do when they want to pretend that they don't care half as much as they really do. The dragon princess gave a nod of encouragement, and turned her attention elsewhere.

"Cybele," she continued, addressing an elegant and sinuous dragon, gilded scales interspersed with muted brown, splashes of red and white only drawing attention to the whole. Only slightly older than Tiamat, she could not be otherwise more different; a determined, passionate, but grounded creature, possessing an ego perhaps surpassing her years, yet with a wisdom derived from ages of experience nevertheless. Centered, in the way she wished Mana was. "Guard the stone of earth well," Vadise ordered, "for it is the center of the Jumi." Cybele glared slightly as she often did when being told what to do, but nodded, unable to argue, understanding finally overcoming her instinct towards rebellion. It was enough.

That concluded the easy decisions, and Vadise waffled on the remainders. The Stone of Fire…. She hesitated. All left were minor dragons, weak and young, none suitable to guard a Stone. A thought occurred to her, insane and rabid yet perfectly logical… She was suddenly afraid to speak.

"What is it, little sister?" asked Akravator gently, he sensing her mood as always.

"The Fire Stone. There is only one I can think of," she admitted, quickly falling silent as she questioned her own decision. A hush followed among the group, making her next words ever more potent. She took a deep breath, letting her lungs fill with not only air, but the energy of Mana that drifted along with it.

"Drakonis," she finally uttered, and at that one word, the gathering erupted.

"The being who created the _monsters_ now known as dragons, besmirching our name? It cannot be allowed," Argot beseeched her, even his strong voice barely audible over the others.

"Quiet!" Jajara roared, his burst of anger putting the fear of the Goddess into the minor dragons. At least they shushed. "She is speaking."

He jerked his neck towards Vadise. "He is trapped in the Underworld, and that has been taken over by Olbohn," she began, "and the Stone may accept him. Like it or not, he is of Mana now, in a way where the concepts of 'good' and 'evil' become irrelevant. We don't have another powerful enough, and we can keep him under control." A nod from Jajara showed her he understood her meaning. "I am more worried about the stone of darkness."

"I will take that Stone," claimed Jajara.

Horrified gasps echoed, and Vadise realized hers was one of them. "Jajara, no!" she found herself crying. "It comes at a cost!"

To her surprise, Argot, silent until now, chose this moment to interfere. "Let him, little one," he said, with all of his famous presence. "He knows."

Jajara strode forward proudly. "Not everyone can handle the power of Shade. I will find it," he announced, "and I will pay Shade's cost. The cost of death."

Vadise suppressed the hint of a tear that came to her eyes, knowing what he meant. But she supposed, it was only necessary, all things considered. "Then it is so," she told the group. "We are the Dragons of Knowledge, the ancient beings who are the only ones who can protect the order of the world, the structure of Mana, to keep if from splintering into dust." She let that sink in, then continued. "We are not part of this world, yet we are, and no more than ever we must anchor in this dimension. Find your dragoons, your knights, to fight where we cannot, to protect and shelter us as we guard our sources of Mana." Akravator, at least, already had done so, she knew. "Whatever is needed, this is our charge, now."

The dragons shuffled away, heavy with the weight of their new responsibility. Only Akravator lingered behind, his presence a comfort as the others left.

Finally, only the two of them remained. "I think I will stay here," he told her, looking at the frozen mountains above. "Something like the peaks of Rolante, but it calls to me more."

"Do you miss Rolante?" she asked him. "Some remembered you, when you chose to linger there as well. They thought you were my father. They called you in ancient times the Father of the Winged Ones."

Akravator grinned toothily at the thought of himself as her father. "How little humans understand."

"Little, yes, but they cannot be ignored…" Vadise began. Her thoughts had drifted onto other topics, other things that were bothering her.

Akravator sensed her unease. "What is it you will ask me to do?"

"I wish you to meet with Anuella," she told him. Inquiry spread across his face. "We will have to choose a side with the humans sooner or later. She is the one to follow. She is little of her mother."

Akravator contemplated. "Very well, then," he finally said. "It will be done." Flapping his wings, he rose into the chilled Altenan air.

------------------------------------

Anuella approached the designated meeting spot, at the border of Diorre and Altena, with trepidation. Here, it was within a few miles that barren frozen wasteland gave way to lush forest, and as many Altenans as the elves and the forest itself would let in had fled here over the last fifty-odd years, beginning what was now being called the Altenan exodus.

A handful of fairies buzzed around her; she was rarely out of their sight completely nowadays, and she suspected at least one watched her when she slept, ate, and made love. Even so, they had an additional reason for coming here today. "That way," motioned one.

It had been Akravator who had asked her here, through Selva. Not long after their first meeting, she had confronted a group of mages in those same mountains, they once followers of her mother from the other side, now haggard refugees hanging on to a faint hope. They had been traveling up the mountains, shivering in the Altenan cold, lighting their way through winter darkness with a lantern sculpted from a human skull. As hard as she pried them for information, all they would admit to was that they were looking for a stone guarded by dragons. _Akravator's stone_. When Selva had told the dragon, he had understood the threat well enough; and Anuella had realized uncomfortably that the dragons were no longer untouchable creatures, but were as inextricably wrapped up in things as she herself was.

But as she traversed the snowfields, she saw a different dragon awaited her. This one was pure white, not the icy grey-blue of Akravator's hide, with only the faintest hint of what might have once been a youthful tuft of orange fur capping her forehead. She – for unknown reasons, Anuella was certain it was a she – was beautiful, and graceful, and somehow both soft and strong at the same time, an inner strength that surpassed the merely physical.

"Greetings," the dragon welcomed her, words thickly accented as if unused to human tongue. "I am pleased to make the acquaintance of the Wisdom Anuella. I am Vadise." The name slurred off into a soft sound somewhere between an _s_ and a _z_,a touch that somehow made the name ever more elegant.

"It is my honor, Dragon Princess," Anuella responded with a polite incline of her head. Akravator had told her of this one.

Another dragon came from the side, equally striking with a luminous silver glow to him, but somehow distinctly masculine. "And I am Argot, King of the Dragons," he told Anuella, as Vadise seemed to defer to him. "We have a proposal for you."

The fairies gathered round to listen, and Anuella focused her attention.

"You know we guard the Mana Stones," Argot continued, voice booming. "We have an interest in protecting Mana for the future, same as you."

"You will join our side?" one fairy asked, excitedly. "Years already we have fought, and no progress has been made."

Anuella pondered. It had been what, fifteen-odd years of war since the day she had met Akravator and glimpsed his Stone; but now, it seemed, the dragons were finally willing to take a more active role. "A few dragons could certainly help the balance," she said thoughtfully. "The towers the mages are beginning to build… it lets them amplify their Mana, weak and twisted though it may be, and bring it into play against ours. It becomes harder and harder to fight back, even with the forces of Rolante on our side."

"We may have the ability to help you in that," Vadise replied cautiously, and Anuella nodded. The unspoken promise hung in the air.

"Then it is agreed," Argot said, inclining his head respectfully. "The dragons will join you, Wisdom, and perhaps together we can shape Mana the way it was meant to be."

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Perhaps it had been inevitable. Perhaps they had already made the choices, years ago, when they had decided to join Anuella and the fairies. Perhaps even years before then, when she had stood on a snow-covered hill, to give the dragons the responsibility to watch the Stones. Perhaps it was her fault.

It did not matter _how_ things had worked out; as they had come closer and closer, Vadise had been dreading this day.

It had long since been decided that the Wyrm was to be summoned. Perhaps, Vadise thought, that was the essence of what the dragons could bring to the conflict, access to powers humans and fairies could not reach on their own; but no matter how she viewed it, she could not like it. The powers of the dragons let them summon creatures much stronger than the humans could, but they had no more control than any other being once those creatures were summoned.

Anuella walked at her side; merely a human, but a friend nevertheless. They had talked of this many a time; she knew the mage shared her views, but as it became apparent that certain things were inevitable, the Wisdom had descended into an expressionless and impassive frame of mind, the attitude of one who no longer expected the best, merely hoped to minimize the worst.

Vadise might have been sorrowful at that, if she had not felt much the same.

It was a distant, unconcerned part of her that watched the proceedings with detached coolness, that heard her voice speaking but barely registered the words it spoke. The core of her had withered away somewhere, wondering if everything Her Goddess had created led only to this.

Argot had been the one chosen to summon the Wyrm, he insisting it was his right. Atop the hill he stood, all dragon pride, surrounded by a gathering of various fairies, dragons, and human allies. He raised one clawed hand, wings stretching to their full span, and an awed hush descended.

He murmured the incantation, in the ancient language of the Goddess slurred with some of the tongue of demons; a linguistic temptation, meant to lure them, yet confine them to this world as they emerged from the bizarre dimension they existed in.

The sky darkened, and Vadise felt a chill, something like the warmth of Mana in the sense of providing an otherworldly sensation; at the same time, completely different, and it gave her a feeling she couldn't describe, except for an itch of profound discomfort.

Odd pink light appeared, first diffuse, then coagulating into a ring, a loop that swirled faster and faster, until that light changed once again, becoming a shape in the clouds… at first as large as the dragon himself, but as it settled into the sky not far above them, it… stretched, and grew, from large to absolutely enormous. It continued to grow as long as it could find Mana to feed it, greedily snapping it up, inhaling it, centering it, an amorphous construction that slowly began to take form. The expanding shape was somewhat a grotesque parody of a dragon, a long spine with no wings or appendages, and capping it, an enormous, insect-like head. Its jaws snapped with the sound of bone crunching, and it emerged into something resembling life.

"_Lucemia_," Argot's voice resounded, the name incongruously delicate on his dragon tongue. "You are now the Wyrm of Light, and you will do my bidding." Vadise could follow the remainder of the incantation, spoken in dragon and demon tongues, but as Argot uttered the words that confined it, the Wyrm screamed in frustration, a shriek in a pitch heard nowhere in the ordinary world.

It was rebelling against its confines, and Argot strained visibly to hold it in; Vadise recognized what was happening, but was powerless to interfere. The spell bound it in chains of Mana, but the demonic creature fought its bonds; and as it siphoned off Mana greedily, the King of the Dragons was having a harder and harder time restraining it. Mana crackled in the air in a way that tingled over her scales, as the Wyrm grew larger and larger before their eyes.

With a sharp crack, the spell recoiled, almost visible as it snapped and Lucemia tore off into the sky. The backlash whipped towards Argot, and Vadise shrieked as she felt the Mana collapsing in on itself, wrapping the dragon in skeins of disordered energy.

Free at last, Lucemia wailed once, and fled off into the skies.

Before she knew what she was doing, she was running towards Argot, reaching him, just as he collapsed. His eyes were bulging; his breath was shallow.

"Perhaps now we know what can kill a dragon," he murmured. "A greater Mana than the dragon's own, out of balance…"

"No," Vadise whispered in horror. To think that one of their own might not survive to see the Goddess…

"I chose to summon the most powerful of the Wyrms," Argot told her. "I thought I could control it, but did not realize it would consume me… it will be restrained some, you will be safe, dragon princess, you must be strong for me…"

Vadise shook her head, afraid. "How could this be?"

"It is the price paid for summoning," Argot told her. "Every summoning from the reaches of demons carries such a risk. Do not worry, I knew and accepted it. Jajara controls my opposite element; he is strong enough to help watch mine as well. He has the strength, the same strength he calls on now to restrain Drakonis."

Vadise felt crystalline tears forming in her eyes, only to dissipate before ever reaching the ground, as Argot lay down, and like all creatures of Mana, disappeared in sparkling motes.

------------------------------------

The pain was still there, a thorn in her heart. The wars had all but finished once Lucemia destroyed itself swallowing a volcano, its enormous corpse burning for a full year, a fitting memorial to the war of destruction. But Argot was gone, never to return.

Jajara may have taken up some of Argot's role, but his way was very different from the King of the Dragons, Vadise realized as she looked at the structure in distaste.

It had once been the mountain known as Dragon's Hole, but Jajara had shattered the red rock to little more than pebbles, and remade it, supported by the bones of the monsters that had been known as dragons, and sealed it all together with their blood. An ancient stone head that had led into the mountain had been the only thing the guardian of the Stone of Darkness had kept.

"A fitting monument. The bone fortress, to protect the stone of darkness, as I am the bone dragon," Jajara told her. "Shade's power is strong here because of all the death, and it balances life. Look around at the glass desert," he told her, one clawed arm gesturing. "The desert that once supported no life blooms again, where before there was no balance. The Mana rolls off it in waves, and the foliage absorbs the Mana." He sighed contentedly. "Can't you feel it?"

Vadise could indeed, but she recoiled from the sight nevertheless; the more so as she entered the fortress through the stone structure of a dragon's cranium, down hallways constructed of cartilage and enormous rib bones, finally arriving at the room Jajara had morbidly named the Throne of Corpses. Skeletons of indeterminate monsters littered the chamber, and behind it all, the tiny Mana stone glittered an odd purplish-black that seemed to lighten as darkness was shown upon it.

Jajara himself had showed the effects of fifty-odd years of playing with the powers of darkness and death. The once-beautiful dragon had an appearance that spoke of advancing age, even decay, his eyes sunken, hide dulled and stretched tighter over the skeleton underneath. Patches of gray had appeared on the skin as if from some mottled disease.

The strange thing was, it all seemed to give Jajara a sense of pride, pride in facing and enduring the powers of Shade, chaotic, misunderstood, and difficult to control. It was not the passivity and emptiness of Bahamut's Luna power; this was something more active and wild. Vadise preferred the comfort of Dryad's blossoming powers of life. If that made her weaker, so be it.

"I wish to see the rest," Vadise said, suddenly desperate to leave the chamber to its deadly silence.

Jajara cackled, and motioned for her to follow. He led her to a smaller, but still large room, completely overtaken by a stone basin filled with a luminescent, purplish-pink liquid. It simultaneously drew her, and repulsed her.

"What is it?" she asked.

"An idea I got from Drakonis," he told her. "They have some basin of flame in the Underworld. This doesn't do the same thing, but the principle is the same, as is Leires' mirror. Look inside," he urged.

Vadise did, reluctantly. The hypnotic swirls drew and held her eyes, lulling her into a strange sort of peace. It was Mana, first ordered, then chaotic, then spontaneously returning to the same pattern once again. It reminded her some of Lucemia's summoning, of the power that destroyed Argot. "It illustrates the power of Mana itself," she observed.

"Drakonis," Jajara murmured. "He would wish he had such a power. This fortress was once his domain, but he could not make the most of it, he always understood death as a one-sided thing." He chuckled. "You told us to find dragoons, but I have not found anyone worthwhile. I will need a strong dragoon who can survive the powers of death."

"Better look in the Underworld, then," suggested Vadise.

"The Underworld," Jajara mused. "A good suggestion. Anything I could find in there has already endured, and suffered. There is a testing aspect to the place, to facing that extreme, death and darkness, the things we wish not to see. It scars you, but makes you stronger in the end. Only those who endure that test can call themselves truly strong."

Vadise hoped that was a test she never had to endure.

------------------------------------

"The Light Stone. Argot. Jajara. Death. Darkness. Destruction," Vadise wailed, the things she had seen and heard at Jajara's fortress still weighing on her brain. "What have we done? What have I wrought? Argot has died, and who else will die before this is all through?"

"Little one," Bahamut told her, "do not fret. I believe Argot knew what he was getting himself into."

"But it's not right," Vadise sniffled. "He had responsibilities as well. Who, now will guard the stone? I cannot leave the choice to Jajara."

Bahamut pondered. "I will see to it."

"You will watch it as well as the moon stone?"

"Not watch," Bahamut differed. "Hide, perhaps, as I have done with the moon stone."

"You never told us where it was," Vadise protested.

"It is… and it isn't," Bahamut told her mysteriously. "Like the powers of moon themselves, they are hidden in nothingness. It is in the tower, same as it ever was, but it cannot be seen, or found there." He paused, amused. "Carlie's granddaughter does not realize she is using its power. She finds some of Mana, but does not realize that they would be worth little without the aid of the Stone's power. Still, her art is in the shaping, and she does some good work. The mages will never find that tower."

"But the light stone?" Vadise persisted.

"It will be hidden as well," Bahamut declared. "What better place to hide light than within the darkness?"

Vadise thought for a moment, and then suddenly she understood. "Light within the darkness," she mused. "As the moon complements the sun that brings life…" For a moment, the sensation of Mana filled her, not in the way that was always a part of her, but a complete and absorbing ecstasy of Mana swirling, splintering, and rejoining once again.

Bahamut watched her, as she caught her breath, reeling slightly from the force of it. "You see what I am telling you, dragon princess," he agreed. "That understanding is what brings hope."


	32. Legends: Fallen

**32: Legends: Fallen**

It was just short of midnight when Escad hustled her out, both wrapped in gray cloaks that let them blend into the moonlit night. All six moons were out, and Ariesa thought she could feel the spirits watching her from them. She felt a unaccountable twinge of sadness, and fear, as the house slipped into the distance.

But she knew why she was doing this, to help Elazul. _To help Pearl_, she corrected herself. _Where had that come from, anyway?_ Whichever one she meant, she supposed it really didn't matter; the end result was the same.

_Pearl_. She flashed back a moment, to the first time they had pursued Pearl to Leires. Pearl had left in the night, a night much like this one, by herself and unarmed. How had she not been absolutely terrified? What had she been feeling, that spurred her on? Want? Need? Something else?

Escad led the way in relative silence, only broken by occasional brusque comments of "This way," and "Watch your step."

He wasn't a man of many words, and very difficult to read. Unlike Elazul, who needed Pearl, needed someone to center himself on, Escad was a true loner. One of those who sought a goal and pursued it, no matter what the cost, believing the ends justified the means. She had seen that in him well enough before.

Suddenly, it bothered her to be out here with only him.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked finally. They had been trudging through a graveyard, and wind whistling between the stones was beginning to give her the creeps.

"This is far enough," Escad said, stopping in front of a rather macabre tombstone, larger and more garish than the rest. Carvings, but strangely no names, littered the front, and surmounting it was a gargoyle, wings raised as if to swoop down and attack.

Ariesa looked as Escad doubtfully. "You dragged me out here in the middle of the night to a tombstone? How will this help Pearl?"

"Not a tombstone. A portal, to somewhere and someone who can tell you more."

"A portal," she said flatly. "How do we get inside?"

"You don't. It will come take you. Just wait." Escad looked around as if hearing something. "It already senses our presence."

Ariesa held still, hardly daring to breathe, and for a long moment no sound except that freakish wind could be heard, her ears playing tricks on her, making her think she could hear voices in the wind. Dead voices, frightened voices, screaming voices.

Something caught her vision, and she thought her eyes were starting to play tricks on her as well. She blinked to make sure, but there it was still, a light growing slowly in the center of the tombstone. Brighter and brighter it became, first overtaking the moonlight, then expanding to fill her sight completely, and she felt the ground shift beneath her, felt herself falling into that light...

And in the light, she heard a voice.

"_Warrior... I shall test your strength..."_

------------------------------------

Ariesa pulled herself to hands and knees carefully, shaking her head to look at her surroundings, hoping . Unfortunately, they were still there, stone walls pulsating with veins like blood and flickering of fire.

Escad stood next to her, and reached a hand down to pull her up, with genuine concern on his face. "You alright? The entry isn't so easy."

"I guess." She dusted off her clothing with a bit of prissiness. "Where it this?"

"The Underworld," said an unfamiliar voice. Ariesa turned towards it, to face a grey-furred wolf-man adorned in hard red leather. "Escad," the stranger greeted her companion with a toothy grin. "It's been a while."

"Larc," Escad replied. "Ariesa, this is Larc, dragoon of Drakonis. He is the one who can help us get to the Mana Stones."

"Dra... what?" she mumbled. It was all rather confusing to her, and she was forced to place her trust in Escad, whether she wanted to or not.

Larc looked her up and down appraisingly. "Ariesa, it was? And she is a powerful warrior?"

"She is. She's pretty damn good with that sword," Escad affirmed. "Unless you wanted to bring a Jumi down here."

"Jumi. No thanks. You know as well as I what would happen if a Jumi came down here. Well, if you want to know more, Ariesa, follow me down below."

"I... I'm not sure about this," Ariesa admitted. "The _underworld_? What are we going to do here?" She took an uncomfortable half-step back. Pokiehl's poetry echoed in her head, and it was taking on a whole new meaning now.

"You fail to understand," Larc said, his voice sounding resigned.

Escad put one reassuring hand on her shoulder. "We can't leave again without permission. But it'll be fine, I promise. This is the home of my master, the Wisdom Olbohn, the manager of departed souls, and the one who keeps the dead from getting out of hand."

"You should have told me," Ariesa griped, but followed Larc nevertheless.

"The Underworld was once the home of demons," Escad told her as they traveled through the caverns, trying to soothe and distract her. It did help, she admitted. "Its magic… it was once the utter and complete disorder of those demons, something beyond what we can understand and predict, but now, it's the chaos one finds from Salamando or Shade."

"Chaos? Disorder? Aren't those the same thing?" she asked, confused.

"It… takes some time to get it," Escad admitted. "You've heard the legends of Angela?" Ariesa nodded impatiently. "She could use those powers, because she knew how to surrender to them, how to let them take over and still trust in them, because they are still part of Mana. Then Anise tried to follow in her footsteps, thinking the demon powers could be used for the same purpose; but you can't surrender to those. Even trying to force them, they still took her over."

Ariesa contemplated that, as a hush settled over the trio once again.

She quickly lost track of how many levels they descended, the air changing from pleasantly warm after the night's coolness to suffocating hot, somewhere deep within the earth. At least, she hoped they were deep within the earth, because she did not want to consider where else, exactly, she might be. The walls seemed to pulse in time with their footsteps, and everywhere she looked, she could have sword she saw faces in those rocks, faces silently screaming, their voices carried on the wind above ground. And where there were no walls… in the empty space below swirled a purplish mist, hiding the bottom from her view. If there even was a bottom.

Something flew through the air past her face, and she instinctively swatted it, only to find it disappeared, reappearing a few feet away with several more of the same creatures. They were wispy, bodiless spirits, striped in candy-pinks and blues, bearing freakishly large googly eyes. Ten or twelve pairs of those eyes focused on her.

"Hello!!!" the one greeted her in an odd singsong voice. "Welcome to the Underworld! You'll be one of us soon enough!" Ariesa recoiled slightly.

"Ignore them," Escad commanded. "They just say things like that to freak you out. They're Shadoles, and all they are, is servants of Olbohn. They can't do anything to you but annoy you." Larc grunted at that, and Ariesa relaxed slightly.

Doubts about the man aside, she was glad to have at least one familiar face near her, and slowly the Underworld stopped bothering her. Much.

"_You!"_

The sudden shout startled her. Ariesa knew that voice, but couldn't place it. Then she saw the speaker coming towards her, and recognition dawned. "_Rubens_?" she asked.

"Found your way down here, Rubens?" Escad asked, half-joking. "We all do, eventually."

"Jumi don't," Rubens told him, crossing his arms, and Escad's jaw dropped.

"I didn't know you were Jumi," he responded.

Rubens snorted. "Doesn't really matter now, anyway. Without Florina, I'm not getting out of here alive, either. But Ariesa - " he said, turning his attention away from Escad – "what are you doing here? You're not dead."

Ariesa looked hesitantly at her two companions. Larc had leaned against the wall with the look of someone who knew this was going to take as long as it took, and was prepared to wait however long that was. Escad was just being snippy and sullen, now. She removed her attention from the two, and focused it on Rubens.

"You remember Elazul?" Rubens nodded. "Well, what happened is…" She briefly summarized all the details she felt were appropriate to spill. Larc nodded thoughtfully at a few points. "And so," she finished. "Pearl is… suffering… I think, they both are in a way I can't explain."

"They suffer the way every Jumi suffers," Rubens told her, "separated from their own…" His expression grew distant for a minute, but he seemed to forcibly push whatever troublesome thought had penetrated away again. "A guardian named Pearl, you say? Never met her, though I did know a knight named Lady Blackpearl."

Ariesa's stomach dropped at the name; she had not mentioned Blackpearl, or Leires, at all. "Who…?" she asked. "Who was she?"

"She was… a friend," Rubens said, and left it at that, his tone clearly indicating he did not plan to say more. "But Elazul..." Rubens mused. "So he is still fighting. Good kid. If only I wasn't stuck down here, I could join him. He made me remember the determination I once had for the Jumi to survive. So this Pearl... she might be able to take over as Clarius. With her, we could do without Florina, and without Blackpearl, if we had to. I'm sure Diana would have seen it the same way."

_Diana_, she thought. _The Jumi who crystallized herself to become nothing more than a statue in Geo. He was her knight, _she thought sadly. "How are _you_ here?" Ariesa asked Rubens, changing the subject. "I thought Jumi disappear when they..." She could not finish the sentence. It felt strange to address someone who was technically, dead.

Rubens snorted. "I'm hardly a Jumi, without a jewel." He motioned to unbroken skin. "But really, I think I'm here because I haven't been able to give up completely. Jumi never really die unless their core is shattered, not truly, but so many have given up that it doesn't matter."

"Perhaps we can change that," Ariesa told him.

Rubens' fire suddenly seemed to go out, and she remembered it was only a spirit she was talking to. "Perhaps you can. I'd say I hope to see you again, but I hope I don't see you here."

------------------------------------

Larc led them in silence through the passages, their footsteps echoing with a dull thud that did not sound like echoes did in the real world. Ariesa was beginning to wonder how far he was planning to take them, when he led them into a chamber off to the side, completely dominated by a large basin full of flames.

Around the basin flitted a number of the colorful ghostlike creatures she had seen earlier, singing and doing somersaults in midair. If she had seen them anyplace else, she might have thought they were cute. But being in the Underworld did have a way of reducing their adorability.

Flickers of light, like loosened candle flames, floated up from the basin to fade away as they neared the ceiling. It gave her sort of a nice feeling, as if light was still a presence even in the Underworld.

"Let us down, Shadoles," Larc ordered.

The... Shadoles, was it? stopped their erratic motion to line up in formation around the basin of flames. "A fire baptism's needed to go lower! No baptism without Olbohn's permission!" they uttered in unison. "It's the rules!"

"I _have _been baptized. You know this," Escad grumped.

"You have... but _she _hasn't." One Shadole swirled its tail in Ariesa's direction.

"Fire baptism?" she wondered. That did not sound… pleasant.

"Well, I guess we see Olbohn first," Escad concluded.

"This way," Larc said, gesturing as he took a few steps forward.

"No, I'll lead," Escad replied, and Larc stopped. "I know the way well enough." Larc only shrugged.

Escad did not lie, leading them down through the twisted labyrinth of the Underworld. Ariesa had long since lost track of direction; she only hoped that up was in the same direction as always.

Finally, Escad stopped in front of the doorways that seemed bare cracks in the rock, with no announcement of entry. Not that it mattered; Olbohn, Master of the Underworld, seemed to have been waiting for them.

Ariesa's first impression was a sort of combination of awe and disgust. Olbohn did not seem to notice as his bulbous, onion-like head turned to her, at least five or six of the eyes scattered over it looking in her direction. "Why, look at this one," the strange-looking wisdom observed, seeming almost delighted. "Quite a lively one. Some plan with Drakonis, Larc?"

"None of your business," Larc grumped.

"I suppose not. Truthfully, I don't really care. It will all play out the way it is supposed to, and I will be here to greet those who do not survive it." Olbohn turned to Escad. "Greetings, my former apprentice. I see you reached the goal I sent you for. I know Irwin is dead. I had worried what happened after you asked me to send you to Lucemia."

"He is," Escad confirmed. "Even as unprepared as you left me. You wouldn't even fight me yourself, but you sent me after the demon."

"You wish to challenge me?" Olbohn raised a hand, and a dark iron sword slipped into being, only to disappear just as quickly. "The time for that has not yet come, I think."

Escad jutted out his lip slightly. "Why even bother, then, teaching me the way of the sword?" He seemed pouty, almost.

Olbohn looked surprised he asked. "Because you wished it. I would have taught you to befriend Irwin if you wished it. It is your desire, I merely provided the means."

"Then why won't you fight me?" Ariesa couldn't help but think Escad seemed whiny and pleading next to the dignified, if bizarre, Wisdom.

"You understand so little. You think fairies are evil, but you decided for yourself what my words to you meant, for your own desire and purpose." Olbohn gave him a pointed look. "Do you seek death?"

"I do not seek it, but neither am I afraid of it!"

"Escad, you need something to wish for, not something to fear," Olbohn said, with almost a hint of resignation. "All you wish for is personal victory. Come back when you are ready to win. I shall be waiting."

"To win? You'll only fight me knowing the outcome? What fun is that?"

"I said _you_ will win. I did not say I would lose." Olbohn raised a hand for emphasis. "I always win and never lose, because I know what it is I am truly trying to achieve, not just what the immediate fight is about. That is true victory. You are simply seeking grandeur for yourself, and that will only ever be a partial victory. Pursue goals only for yourself, and you shall end up being mocked."

"Oh, stop lecturing me and shut up," Escad replied childishly. _That's got to hurt his ego_, thought Ariesa smugly.

Larc sighed at the exchange. "Wisdoms never say anything worth repeating. Why do you useless beings exist?."

"Existence and meaning cannot be separated. I am meaning itself. do you understand?"

"No." Larc was scornful.

"That's because you are dead," said a chirpy voice behind them.

"Pokiehl," Olbohn greeted the traveling bird-poet.

"How many Wisdoms are there in the Underworld?" Escad asked.

"As many as we wish. They say the dead come here, but it's meant for souls who still cling to life. As long as you are able to feel happiness and sorrow, you can avoid the Shadoles; as long as your spirit is free, you will not become one of them. They will try to drag you to the bottom of the underworld, but if you can endure the sorrows of the dead, then this is just another warm cave."

"What do you have to do with the Underworld, Wisdom?" Ariesa asked curiously.

"People with pure hearts go to a whole new world, my lady," he told her pleasantly. "They do not remain here."

"You would do well to follow the example of this one," Olbohn told Escad, pointing to Ariesa. "She seems to understand."

"Me?" she wondered. "Why does everyone wonder about me? I don't know anything?"

Pokiehl strummed his lute, a mournful chime that hung in the air, strangely alive after the deadness of the underworld. "It's not because of what you know, but what you will know. Because you reach for life. My child, know that you can do anything you wish. And know that you are a human being, like any other. Do not hurry in life or death. Those with free will shall always find something worthwhile, and you have more will than most." Ariesa was surprised, trying to figure out _what_ it was the Wisdoms saw in her that she couldn't locate within herself.

"Baptism? Hello?" Larc interrupted. "Does anyone remember why we came here?"

"For this one?" Olbohn looked surprised. "Is that necessary, Larc?"

"We have things to do," Larc growled.

"Well, then, proceed. Hope she survives it." He turned away in dismissal.

Ariesa had been getting a bit of a flushed feeling that _wasn't _from the fiery pit that was the Underworld, but she found herself being suddenly hustled out by Larc, and hiking back up to the corridors they had so recently descended.

Escad caught up to her. "It will be fine," he said reassuringly.

"What's this baptism about?"

"Well, basically, you just get a bunch of flames poured over you."

"That's _all_?" Ariesa shrieked like a girl, her voice echoing through the caverns of the Underworld as if making fun of her. "Flames? Does it hurt?"

Escad looked reluctant. "It will," he told her, "but only for a second. Nothing you can't handle. Just, literally, a trial by fire."

"And then what?" Ariesa fretted. Normally not much scared her, but this weird paranormal stuff was freaking her out. Goddess, she would die of embarrassment if Elazul were here.

"Then," Escad replied, "the Underworld opens to you."

"Well, perhaps that's desirable," she murmured. Bud would probably want to come down here to see Olbohn, and maybe...

"We're here," Larc interrupted her train of thought. "Are you ready?"

She looked at Escad, and caught a brief nod of encouragement. "Ready," she agreed.

"Baptism!" the Shadoles screamed gleefully. One grabbed up a silver spoon and scooped up a handful of angry-looking flames, and as it headed towards her, the spoon trembled in midair, the flames dripping off its sides. Ariesa forced herself to straighten, as the spoon came over her head. The spoon tilted, those flames spilling off like water...

She screamed. Goddess, it _hurt_. Every bit of her body was on fire, she could feel her clothes vaporized it ashes and her hair singed away from her head, her skin acting like the single organ it was, every cell shrieking in unison as its life was burned away...

And then it was gone. As suddenly as it began. She reached one hand to her waist, another to the hair of her head, to find everything was as it should be. Even her hair sticks were properly arranged. She twisted one for good measure.

_Pearl_, she suddenly remembered. That's why she had come here. "So now I can get to the bottom of the Underworld?" she said.

"Yes," Larc confirmed. "Ready when you are."

"I am," she said decisively. "Let's go."

------------------------------------

"The bottom of the Underworld," Larc announced.

The cavern to which he had led them was carved into enormous silent faces, stone bearing permanent expressions of horror and pain. Were those just for show? Or trapped within those rocks, were there some of those souls that Pokiehl had spoken of, souls that clung to life still?

Ariesa shuddered. As if the journey down hadn't given her enough creepiness for one day. The Shadoles swept all around her, trying to occur their taunting words and threats to take her soul… She tried to keep the words of the Wisdoms to heart, but here, deep within the Underworld, it became easy to forget who one was. And why she was here.

"Why are any of us here, indeed?"

She was sure she had not spoken, but someone had heard her thoughts nevertheless. The rocks themselves seemed to part, and a young, beautiful woman with long auburn braids and a doll-like face stepped out. Ariesa had never seen her before.

But Escad had.

"Matilda," he said, suddenly distraught.

"Escad," she replied, and Ariesa finally placed that high, lilting voice, though it seemed out of place on this young woman, she having heard it only from an old, withered crone. "Strange to see you here."

"I was here for ten years. And you know why."

"You had your choice," Matilda replied, strangely echoing Olbohn. "And Larc, I meet you, as well, once again. I suppose you wish to pass? To find Drakonis's order for you?"

"I must follow the will of my master," Larc replied. "There is no choice in it."

"Then I can only give you the freedom to do so," she replied, then turned to the third person there. "Ariesa," she greeted the young woman warmly.

"Matilda," Ariesa said in wonder. "What has become of you? Is this good, or bad?"

"I am the Wisdom now, taking Anuella's place," Matilda said simply.

"So you live on. Daena will be pleased to hear it."

"Daena?" Matilda looked sad. "She is well then?"

"She is. If you are the Wisdom, you should see her."

"I will. As the Goddess permits." She paused for a long moment. "I have had time to think over a number of things… So many wants I had, and now I do not know if I am sorry for that wanting, or for the actions I did and didn't take because of them. But you see, the one thing I did not want was wisdom, the truth of Mana; and now I understand, whether I like it or not. The power of change comes from within, and that power is love, that power is Mana. But as you can see - " she said, motioning to her spiritual form, "that wisdom came with a price for me."

Ariesa took a step forward, reaching out hesitantly at the other woman's pained tone, wondering if she would touch flesh, or if her hand would draw right through Matilda's image. But the Wisdom only shook her head. "These are my regrets, not yours. Do not fear the future. The flow of time is about to change its way. The end of this era of suffering, of scarcity of Mana, is coming, and people will become free. All I can do for you now is to allow you to find your own path."

"That's what you were trying to tell me, wasn't it?" Ariesa said softly.

"Indeed." Matilda's face darkened a moment. "But though your spirit and desire have awakened, there is more to learn, more to be tested, more to love before you will truly understand the secret of Mana. There are worlds to be opened to you still." By way of illustration, she motioned to the cavern from which she had emerged.

Ariesa felt a chill, but this time not from fear. Something more of… anticipation, frightening in its own way. Nevertheless, she stepped through the opening Matilda had excavated, leaving those strange frozen faces behind.

Larc followed, but Escad lingered back, and as the wolf-man barged forward, she stopped to eavesdrop, one eye peeking around the corner.

"I always hated fairies, you know," Escad grumbled.

"You didn't know how to see them," Matilda gently chided. "You spent so much time here that you thought they were like the Shadoles that Aion made, like shadows. But now you are beginning to understand Mana, and what it really is." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "As am I."

Escad stood, his swaggering manner dropped for the moment. "Matilda," he began, awkwardly. "You know - I always loved you."

"I know," she replied, but there was little more than that knowledge. "Now, go."

------------------------------------

The path crept steadily downward, never truly becoming warmer, but somehow the heat was more pressing than it had been before. Finally, Ariesa involuntarily gasped for breath, as they entered a large cavern, ending in a ferocious lake of fire.

Ariesa flashed back to the flames that had pours over her on the higher levels. Seeing a whole lake like this... it felt as if her skin burned all over again.

Escad stood off to the side, but Larc knelt reverently. "The pulpit of eternal flame. The home of my master, Drakonis." He tensed in anticipation, as a figure approached.

After all that anticipation, she had been expecting someone grand and almighty, but to her surprise she was greeted by a small man of indeterminate age, who spoke in a tenor voice that barely carried. "So we have found a warrior who is worthy?"

Escad stepped forward, eagerly. "She is here."

Drakonis looked her up and down, appraisingly." So I see. I have things to say to this one."

"Does everyone want to see me? Why? What's so special about me?" Ariesa felt a slender whine creeping into her voice, and abruptly suppressed it. The Underworld was obviously getting to her.

"There is nothing to fear. Come here, my child." Ariesa stepped forward uncertainly. "Yes... I see it. There's so much that has been forgotten, these long years. But you don't know your roots, do you?"

"Gaeus said much the same," Ariesa replied. "Why does everyone think I'm so special? Why? I'm just a warrior!"

"We are all only what we can be. And I wish the same. Long ago, on the surface, I was the emperor of dragons, but my powers were stolen from me. I was made to wander the underworld in this weakened form. But the Mana Stones hold the power to give me back what was taken, and perhaps they have something to aid you as well."

_Not I_, Ariesa thought to herself. _My friend_. But that was good enough. "How did this happen, if the Stones were shattered?" she challenged.

"They were, indeed, destroyed," Drakonis confirmed. "Long ago. I remember it happening. But _new_ ones are growing, new stones for the new Goddess. The elementals spirits wait for those stones, for the Goddess, for the time that Mana comes back."

"But Mana is already coming back," protested Ariesa.

"In a sense, but you are thinking of Mana the only way you know how," Drakonis replied. "What's returning is twisted, it's blocked and impure, and if there is no intervention, who knows how it may emerge, what the Goddess may be."

Ariesa remained expressionless. That was pretty much what Daena had said, but somehow, she felt like it wasn't the whole story.

"I see you are not convinced. I will show you a little something more, something that will convince you of my sincerity." He lifted his hands and turned, and from that lake of flame, rose a sparkling stone, reminiscent of a Jumi core in the way all sorts of colors played across its fire-red surface. Ariesa inhaled sharply, and for the first time, she felt herself able to truly feel Mana. It was only a hair's breadth, and she strained for even that, but she knew, recognized that sensation she had to strain for, but she _knew_; it was the same feeling she had received from touching a Jumi core.

"The sensation is faint, is it not?" Drakonis asked, as if he read her thoughts. "It is because I am constrained."

"Constrained?" Ariesa asked. "Who would want to stop Mana?"

Drakonis sighed, almost exasperated. "You have no idea. The Mana Stones are being guarded by other dragons. The Dragons of Knowledge, they call themselves, claiming to protect order in the world, but they only seek domination for themselves, and together they conquered and restrained me, out of jealousy and selfishness, wanting the Stones for themselves. I have been searching for one who could defeat the three dragons in my stead, and allow the nascent power of Mana reach the world."

Ariesa was suddenly furious. _The power of Mana, the power that could help the world, help her friends, and here it was being hidden away?_ "This must be stopped," she announced, surprised at the sudden strength in her own voice.

"So, we defeat the three dragons," Larc interjected.

"Great," added Escad. "Finally, less talk, more action."

"Where to?" asked Ariesa.

"This will guide the way." Ariesa cringed at the item Drakonis made appear and handed to her. She took the item from his hand, gingerly, her own hand barely brushing his flesh, skin that looked human but felt like dry scales. It was a lantern, in the shape of a human skull, she uncomfortably wondering if it had once belonged to a living person. A light shone eerily through those empty eye sockets and teeth, as if it was laughing.

_Mana_, she reminded herself.

------------------------------------

Elazul was peeved.

Daena could tell. Not that it was especially hard with that guy. He wore his heart on his sleeve in both good and bad ways.

She remembered Escad calling _her _impulsive, and suddenly smiled to herself. Just wait until he and Elazul got into it. _It was only a matter of time_, she told herself.

"What are you smiling about?" he demanded. He was _trying_ to demand, actually, but he wasn't doing a good job of it. On his other side, she saw Pearl's smile mirror her own.

Pearl knew the truth as well as she did, maybe more so. He was worried.

But Daena had never been one to say anything but what she really meant. With strangers, she was unflaggingly polite, but she knew Elazul well enough by now. "You," she told him, enjoying his affronted expression. She saw Pearl stifle a giggle. "You're just bitter because she addressed her note to Bud and Lisa."

"A note." His voice was dangerously flat.

"They're her responsibilities. Of _course _she had to think about them first. You're just jealous because she's off Goddess-knows-where with Escad."

"Jealous? Me? Why would I be jealous?"

"Of the two of them, all alone together?" She saw his suddenly pained expression, and realized she might have gone too far. "Well, of course nothing would happen," she hurriedly reassured him. That, at least, she felt pretty confident on, knowing both Ariesa and Escad so well. "But maybe you just miss her."

Elazul looked away with what might have almost been a blush of embarrassment. She might have done better sticking to teasing.

"Pearl!" Bud's shout broke up the awkward moment.

_Speaking of jealous_... Knowing what she did about knights and guardians, which wasn't much, she was surprised Elazul hadn't yet been bothered by the way Bud was mooning over his guardian. Never mind knights and guardians; just knowing _Elazul_, she was surprised. He was as overprotective as that giant canary Miss Yuka and her precious, unhatched Pee-Wee at the inn. She had stayed there only one night, on her first trip to meet Gaeus, and that was enough; the innkeeper just plain drove her up the wall. She was surprised Pearl and Elazul had stayed at the inn so long before renting the house in town.

Pearl was gently indulgent of the boy, or maybe it just went all over her head. She was sweet, but really, what went on in the girl's skull? Daena still didn't really understand what had happened in the Mekiv Caverns, and what it all had to do with Pearl - she'd missed most of it trying to hold her own against Sandra - but she supposed she'd seen stranger things, and accepted them.

Ages were hard to tell on elves - she still didn't know the age of Ariesa, who was a sprite, and only part elf blood - but it was obvious to her, at least, that Bud and Lisa were at that awkward age where one realized that members of the opposite sex are now suddenly interesting. And they had no one to help them through it. She could probably talk to Lisa, but Bud? Perhaps she could rope Elazul into having a chat with him. It would be a tricky conversation, but she resolved to bring up the idea later that night.

Daena returned to the previous conversation she and Elazul had been having. "So, you were talking about Stones and the Sword and stuff right before you went to sleep?"

"Yes," he replied. "And how Pearl, and the Jumi, needed something that could help them out. It's not a terrible stretch of the imagination to think she might run off to find just such a thing. If only I knew what Escad said to her."

Daena had only the vaguest idea herself. Escad's response had been "So, she's looking for some Mana, right?" but then had left it that, giving Daena the uncomfortable feeling that he knew something he wasn't letting on. "So what are we looking for now, anyway, Elazul?" she asked.

"An instrument. An artifact. Whatever. No better place to start than Anuella's old home, right?" He paused. "We'll find her, or we'll find something that forms an arrow to her."

"How can you be so sure?"

Elazul paused for a long moment, and Daena wasn't sure he was going to answer the question, but after a long moment, he did with some awkwardness. "I'm not sure how to put it, except to say that I can feel her in a way – I don't know how to explain it better to someone not Jumi –I have not only this vague sense of where, kind of a sense of her – like a really quick pencil sketch, but enough for me to lead you all out here."

Suddenly he stumbled, and Pearl gasped, but Daena caught him quickly. The twins gathered around as she eased him to a sitting position, he hunched over with one hand on his core.

Pearl quickly knelt before her knight, and wordlessly laid her hand against his lapis jewel. The expression on her face told them everything, as if it wasn't obvious to everyone that Elazul was in some intense pain.

She wrapped her arms around him warmly, and they all gave the Jumi a little space, as Elazul gripped his guardian almost like a baby. Pearl did not move as his fingers dug into her arm deep enough to leave imprints in the skin, but slowly, as the minutes ticked by, his breathing became less gasping and more regular, and his death grip on Pearl loosened, he finally letting her go to plop unceremoniously on the ground. Pearl stayed beside him, all quiet concern.

"Was it Ariesa?" Daena asked, finally breaking the silence.

"I'm – I'm not sure _what_ that was," he said, one hand unconsciously traveling up to his core again. "Goddess, though, it _hurt_."

Daena remained quiet, and momentarily, he spoke again. "A little while ago I had – almost like this dream of her, you know? I was awake, so I guess it wasn't a dream, but it was something about her being in the Underworld. It reminded me a bit of the dreams I had when I thought I was dying, though I don't remember those so well." He paused again. "It frightened me."

------------------------------------

Larc was disturbed as he led them up towards the surface.

Escad - well, he had known what he was getting himself into, had known for quite some time. He knew the ways of the Underworld well enough. But the girl... she seemed easy to dismiss on the surface, but there was something to her, a quiet confidence, a surety. And most likely no clue as to what she was in for.

_How had Escad even gotten her to come here?_ He must have been very convincing, if not outright dishonest. But then again, he had told some very convincing lies to Escad, lies that Olbohn had not seen fit to correct.

Olbohn, though, was a Wisdom, and had been Escad's teacher. He didn't like the Wisdoms. They always said such ridiculous, cryptic things. But they all had a goal in common, the world's future, which they understood in their own way, and that permitted them a certain... discretion... in who they told what. He chose not to ponder why they were permitting this. Even the newest wisdom, only a girl when she had been alive, barely the age of the girl who accompanied him now; she was already gaining that talent for mysticism, for saying everything and nothing, and hiding what her true motivations were.

Ariesa did not know something critical, something, one he wished he had been allowed to warn her about. Half of her spirit belonged to Drakonis now, tied to o _him_, not just the Underworld; she and Escad both, and it was up to Drakonis when to release them.

It bothered him. If she tried to leave, she would only get so far before she faded away to nothingness; it would be a shame to lose her, but a disaster for his master, and by extension, for himself. Escad swore she was something special, and Olbohn only confirmed it.

They were near the surface now. He could feel it, life pulling at him like something he faintly remembered, but it had been so long... He drew himself from rumination to turn to his still-living companions.

"Prepare yourself," he told them. "We are off to hunt the Dragons of Knowledge." The skull lantern grinned agreement.


	33. Secrets: Death

**Author's Note: **Hello, lovely readers! I apologize for the late update (by my standards, anyway). Meeerf has been… busy. To put it lightly. And the dragon arc is turning out to be pretty intense and therefore fairly involved to write. So… I'm going to have to estimate two-week update times for the time being.

On the plus side… I think this chapter duo came out AWESOME. Action, angst, plot twists, etc. etc. etc. Go dragons!

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**33: Secrets: Death**

Sierra strode down the corridors of the castle of Forsena, knives gripped firmly in each hand. The sharpness of the weapons was nothing compared to the anger that burned within her. She thirsted for blood, hungered for pain, craved the death of the so-called Emperor who had abused his citizens and perverted his once-proud nation. The Emperor who was rumored to have unearthly, ungoddessly powers. The Emperor who was called the _Deathbringer_.

All around her were the sounds of fighting, bloody crumpled bodies decorating the halls, many dead but those still alive crying in pain. She winced at every peal. Strangely, she barely noticed the opponents who fell before her, her twin daggers piercing hearts and brains with the lightning-quickness gifted by Vadise, their lives snuffed out before they had a chance to strike a single blow against the avenging dragoon.

Despite the efficiency with which she slaughtered the foes, part of Sierra knew she had hoped she would never have to see such a day. The Dragons of Knowledge were meant to protect this world, not destroy it, and she had become the dragoon to the gentle guardian of the Tree stone for that reason. But that had changed as the empire and their twisted leader looked towards the stones those dragons guarded, even after shattering the city of the Jumi to pieces, his greedy search for Mana becoming ever more fanatical. Nothing like it had been seen since Anise and her mages tore the world apart, hundreds of years before. The Empire would destroying the Jumi. The Empire would destroy the world, given a chance, and that was why Vadise had ordered her to this killing scene.

Only one man stood between her and the door ahead, and she disposed of him with a casual nonchalance, shoving his injured body away with no further thought. Breaking out of the hallway into a large courtyard, the roar of fighting surrounded her on all sides, rebel forces engaging the trained soldiers of Deathbringer. A motley collection of Empire citizens and outlanders, they fought with the wild abandon of those who have nothing to lose.

She spied her brother in the center of it all, looking every bit the hero he was, driven by the passion that had distinguished him since the rebellion had began. They both had ancestors, family, in Forsena, and they hated what had happened to their country. He fought with skill and strength, at the same time shouting encouragement to his troops, spurring them forward. It was that dedication that had led he and his forces to victory after victory since the beginnings of the war, he earning the name "Larc the Conqueror.".

Larc saw her approach, and with a few harsh words ordered his soldiers to clear a path for her. They did, turning all their attention to pushing back the enemy forces from the door at the far end of the courtyard. It was a thin exit, but it was enough.

Larc growled at her. "Go, sister," he told her. Sierra nodded, and rushed through past him, barely registering the soldiers struggling to hold back this new threat. Reaching the door, she flung it open with all her might.

She entered the heart of the castle, leaving him behind to hold off the soldiers. They both knew it was her fight, now. Inside this castle, there was a dangerous, deadly enemy to be faced, and they could not accept anything less than total victory. Larc, by himself, didn't stand a chance; but she was a dragoon, with powers granted by the Goddess's dragons themselves, and it was she who must oppose the devilish man who sought to foul the powers of Mana.

She suspected it was not the Jumi's cores he had sought, even as he butchered the race to obtain them. A tear threatened to come to her eyes at the thought of it, of those entrusted as the keepers of Mana attacked and splintered in a vicious extermination, and part of the hope of the world dying with them. But she knew the curse of the Jumi, and stubbornly kept that tear from falling.

Nor was it the Stones that Deathbringer sought, though they would give him power enough. The cores, the stones… they could lead him to the ultimate weapon, the Sword of Mana, and _that_ could lead him to the Goddess herself. The Goddess waiting to emerge, still new and vulnerable… the thought of Deathbringer getting his hands on Her…

She did not realize how deep those fears had penetrated and distracted her, until she was startled by the appearance of giant doors before her. They were heavier and more ornate than any others, gratuitously inlaid with Vizel gold in an ostentatious display of the owner's wealth. Behind her, she heard tell-tale running footsteps filling the corridor behind her as her brother's forces spilled in, and with a war-whoop, she gave those doors a mighty heave.

The doors slammed against the walls with a roar, and Sierra burst into the throne room of Forsena.

Her enemy, her goal, lay before her. Deathbringer. Irzoile Enashaalac, fifteenth of the line of emperors of Forsena, a line that had begun with Ricrot, as Forsena profited from the shattered remains of other nations left after the Faerie Wars. Nevertheless, those first emperors had been noble and courageous. If only his predecessors could see what had become of the line now.

Irzoile was a small man, to the eyes only moderately into middle age despite being far older than any regular human had any right to. His personal guard moved towards the lone, white-furred beast-woman that had entered their midst, and Sierra gripped her knives in anticipation, but a bare wave from their master's hand, and they froze as one.

He looked at her dismissively. "Sierra. Here at your dragon's behest, I would imagine? Is she here as well?" The emperor didn't bother to get up off his throne. "So, Vadise's dragoon is the latest to challenge me?" he said in a tone of absolute boredom. "You would think they would have learned, after we conquered the Jumi city. The Jumi who fought us there – "knights", they called themselves, nothing on the knights of Forsena – well, I certainly saved the jewel hunter a little trouble taking their cores."

A low growl threatened to escape her throat. _The knights of the empire are nothing of the honorable Knights of ancient Forcena, or the Jumi Knights that followed after them,_ she thought to herself, tensing in anticipation. She could sense Vadise through their bond, a fundamental soul-bond like those used by the now-deceased Jumi, that told one nearly anything and everything about the one on the other end. The dragon's spirit was close, and her body… she was far, still, but heading nearer, trusting her dragoon to make her safe before she descended.

"It's a shame," Deathbringer continued. "It would be so much easier for the dragons to simply give over their stones and save themselves the trouble of dying."

Sierra could not control herself this time. "What makes you think that you can give death to a dragon?" she spouted out. Behind her, she could hear Larc and his forces preparing to attack, but Sierra knew he and she were the real confrontation.

"Give it up, Irzoile." Sierra said, eyes narrowing. "You're surrounded, and your empire is over."

"Foolish girl." Sierra bristled at the insult. "You may defeat the Empire for the moment, but it will cost you. Do not forget, I am the Deathbringer."

He stood, and snapped his fingers, and an enormous, two handed axe appeared in hand, the edge glinting with wicked sharpness. Sierra blinked. In the appearance of that axe, she had felt… some of Mana, but that was not the whole of it, it was… wrapped, in something she could barely sense and understand less, but knew absolutely what is was. _Underworld magic_.

That axe fell, and Sierra darted as it smashed into the floor, throwing up tile and stone. The dragoon winced as she pictured what it might have done to her head. Pushing the thought quickly out of her mind, she dove for Deathbringer as he struggled slightly to bring his heavy axe up again. Larc's forces exploded into the room, but the emperor's personal guard moved quickly to intercept them, leaving her, and her duel, alone in the center.

Her knives slid neatly across his waistcoat but only cut cloth, barely grazing flesh, and before she could ready another strike, the heavy axe head swung towards her own middle. She dropped and rolled underneath, leaping to her feet with cat-like quickness.

Sierra was stuck on the defensive as wild swings of Deathbringer's brutal weapon kept her dodging, her swift agility against Deathbringer's raw, demonically enhanced strength. She had the barest moment of recovery between assaults, no time to gauge weakness or strategy, only to anticipate and respond. Deftly she avoided strike after strike, but slowly but surely, her opponent was wearing her down. Deathbringer never scored a clean hit, but his attacks reached closer and closer, grazing and nicking in turn.

Her body struggled to keep pace, but she knew she could not hang on much longer. The finish came when one arc of that great axe swung straight for her, and with a silent word of prayer to Vadise, she braced for her life to end.

And in a second, there was Larc, and Sierra heard her own scream, as the edge cleaved into Larc's side, slicing through flesh only to stop with a sickening crunch of bone. Larc wheezed, and fell to the floor.

Something snapped within her, and as adrenaline surged through her veins, Sierra went absolutely mad. Her body moved distantly, beyond her control, and before Deathbringer even knew what hit him, a volley of knives tore through his body, striking and tearing every vulnerable organ Sierra could slice into. Blood ran down his body from a million wounds, and the axe tumbled to the floor, smashing into the stone as it fell next to Larc's destroyed body. Her brother only groaned in pain.

Sorrow threatened to take her, and she wanted to run to Larc. But she had a choice to make, and Deathbringer had to go. "Aid me, Vadise!" she whispered, in pain, fear, and frustration; and a gentle tickle of Mana told her that her dragon had heard.

Her chest and arm pained her, the numerous minor wounds collectively hurting. She breathed in the pain, letting it fill her, and with a shout, she leapt forward. At the last second, a surge told her Vadise had given her dragoon of her own power. Deathbringer could not defend against her speed, could not have anticipated how fast she could move, and he had no time to register shock before both her knives plunged as one into his heart.

Deathbringer fell to his knees as realization finally hit. He wheezed, the breath gurgling through collapsed lungs, a shrill sound echoing the lower tone of Larc's struggling breaths. In an inhuman voice, he rasped out his final words. "So it goes, dragoon. Consider this my present to you. Your dead brother."

He crumpled forward, in the end the emperor falling more easily than his empire.

Sierra dragged herself to Larc, feeling all her injuries now that her moment of strength had faded away. Around her, his forces watched, stunned, the soldiers of Deathbringer lying dead in bloody heaps across the throne room.

She reached one hand out to caress the fur of his forehead, her hand touching moisture as sweat came up from even within the hair. "Sister… I always looked up to you…" he forced out.

She began to weep as she scooped him up gently, her brother breathing shallowly in her arms. "Vadise!" she cried, reaching out with all the urgency she could send through the bond. "Please help! I can die, but let him live!"

The white dragon shimmered into existence in spirit form, only a mirror of herself, but Sierra could sense her body coming closer. A long minute drew out as body caught up to spirit, and Vadise's image filled with a white brilliance as light suffused the translucent form, filling it, until Vadise faced her in the flesh as well. The dragon's graceful neck leaned down towards her, and Sierra suddenly winced in pain, hunching forward over Larc's body. Her own blood dripped down to mix with his, and a wave of dizziness was enough to tell her that her injuries were not as superficial as she had suspected.

"Oh no, Sierra," Vadise whispered. "My dear dragoon. You are too close to the border between life and death. You belong to Jajara now, and he must make this decision." She closed her eyes, and Sierra felt the dragon reach out with the ancient power of Mana, a trickle from the Stone itself.

In response to the summon, Jajara appeared, his enormous, skeletal body alighting above the empty throne. Sierra idly wondered what sort of skill or power kept him from falling off his perch.

The bone dragon observed the carnage with a sort of engaged indifference, taking it all in but caring little. "Vadise," he greeted her, dragon to dragon. "What do you want out of this mess?"

"That one," Vadise said simply, stretching neck towards Sierra.

"I don't want to be without my brother," sniffled Sierra.

"How touching," Jajara observed dryly. "Perhaps we can make... a deal? I will give Deathbringer the afterlife as well as Larc."

"Jajara!" Vadise adopted a scolding tone. "After he pursued the Stones so eagerly?"

"You can't!" cried Sierra. "Larc died to defeat him!"

Jajara turned his skeletal head towards Sierra, and she shuddered under that eyeless gaze. "Young one, you have not been a dragoon for so long that you are in a position to question our will. That belongs to your Mistress. As for you, Vadise, you know as well as I do that the balance must be maintained, dark and light, an eye for an eye, a hero for a killer."

Vadise only nodded. "Do as you will. Sierra, let him go, and someday you may meet again." Sierra wept, and Larc's breathing slowed and faded.

"And I suppose you have another proposal for Sierra?" Vadise addressed Jajara.

The bone dragon leaned in, and Sierra wondered how a skull could bear such a cruel look. "An eye for an eye," he told her.

A look of intense concentration spread against Vadise's face, and Sierra could sense undercurrents of fear and worry from her liege. Those emotions warred with desire and hope, and Sierra could only listen to the beating of Larc's heart in the silence that followed, until Vadise finally spoke. "You have the truth of it. The balance of Mana must be maintained in so powerful a request. So be it."

One dragon leaned in towards the other, and before Sierra could shriek, Jajara snapped his jaws forward to pluck out Vadise's right eye.

The dragon did not scream, or even utter a sound, as Jajara took the blue optic orb to squeeze it out over Sierra. She winced, expecting a rain of globby droplets; but in midair they disintegrated into sparkling motes of pure energy to finally settle into her skin. They tingled pleasantly, a familiar feeling of pure Mana, and underneath that sensation she felt her injuries knit themselves together.

At the same time, she realized she could feel Larc's heartbeat no longer. Life had left him, and she gently laid him out on the floor. Forcing herself to her feet, she ran to Vadise to throw her arms around the neck of her liege, and friend.

The dragon nuzzled her affectionately as she let the tears flow all over again. "Hush, Sierra," the dragon told her with a motherly sort of tone.

Sierra howled despite herself.

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Vadise met her fellow dragons in spirit form, in that alternate dimension where they existed as easily as in that of the humans. Here, the deceased souls of Irzoile the Deathbringer and Larc the Conqueror floated in a sort of intermediate existence; they were not truly dead, not yet merged once again with the infinite force of Mana, but neither did they belong to the human world in the same way they once had.

Distantly, she could still feel Sierra, back in the throne room of the world of which this place was a reflection. But it was not for her dragoon to know of this meeting. Vadise was a dragon, and as much as she loved Sierra, responsibilities to the Goddess outweighed any personal emotion or desire.

"Now what?" she demanded, turning her head to the right to adjust for her suddenly restricted vision. It was an inconvenience; but despite Sierra's horror, she would adjust soon enough, and so things went. She brushed it off, and attended to more pressing matters, leaning her remaining eye towards Sierra's brother. "We cannot return him to ordinary life, we do not have the Mana. If you are to honor this bargain, he can only become a dragoon, tied to a dragon to sustain him. You will take him, Jajara?"

The question was rhetorical; she considered the answer a given. Jajara, apparently, did not see things the same. "I will take the other one," he responded, with a quick flick of his skeletal neck in the other direction.

"Deathbringer?" That sent a ripple through her calm. "Why?"

"Irony?" Jajara's hollow face smiled.

"What kind of future do you expect to create with that one?" she demanded, but Jajara only chided her in return, as he regarded the slain body of Deathbringer. "I told you once, Vadise. A dragoon that can survive the powers of death. He has exceeded the limits of life, he has brought death across this world, and those things have power. That power can be controlled, confined…"

"As Argot thought he could control Lucemia?" Vadise challenged.

Jajara turned to her, empty eye sockets boring into her more than any eyes ever could. "As I now control Drakonis," he said harshly. "Argot tried to use ordered powers of light, but I am more comfortable with the chaotic powers of dark. Neither will escape me. It may be, you will lead us into the future, Vadise," he told her. "But with all this death, I decide the present. That is part of the tradeoff. Someone needs to be responsible for death to balance life; and sometimes, a nemesis must needs become an ally."

He spoke the truth, she knew. That tricky balance was what the dragons had maintained in the hundreds of years since they had taken the guardianship of the stones; they were the only ones left with enough of Mana inside them to keep that difficult balance from falling over the razor's edge into that swirling mess where the demons existed. And for this reason, though Vadise had her disagreements, she silenced them.

"Then who takes Larc?" she inquired compliantly.

"I will," replied a voice Vadise dreaded to hear.

The newcomer perched on the windowsill, filling the giant frame, red wings waving slightly to maintain his balance. "Drakonis," Vadise greeted him curtly. "You think you deserve a dragoon of your own? You are not even a true dragon."

"True enough," the crimson dragon replied. "Though the lot of you _did_ let me have a Mana Stone, a nice shiny fire one, after all, not that I can do anything with it but keep the Underworld nice and toasty. The Archdemon would be so jealous if he knew I inherited his domain. Goddess, if I knew the power in the underworld, I might have never turned myself into a dragon."

"And much would be different," murmured Vadise, breaking composure to let a hint of sarcasm creep into her voice. "What do you plan to do with Larc?"

"The same as the rest of you." Drakonis shrugged. "He protects me, I keep the stone safe, until the damn Goddess needs the Stones again."

"You may have him," Jajara said, "but only so you can continue to secure the world of the dead. Death is my domain, and I allow you to stay there only with my permission. Don't you forget it." He sneered, and Drakonis balked, only offering a nod before flying away once again.

Vadise could not like this. "Please, Jajara," she insisted. "Listen to my words. A dragoon gives him a connection to the ordinary world. Who knows what darkness can come of this?"

Jajara stood, unmoved. "Darkness is my domain," he told her, "and darkness had its time and place. We are the Dragons of Knowledge because we know these truths." With that, he was gone.

Vadise could not argue further. Where death rules, it was Jajara's will that predominated. One could only hope that someday there would be more life than death.

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Sierra leaned against the trunk of one of the white-barked trees of Vadise's forest. She had not been the same since returning from Forsena, and Vadise hoped that time would slowly let her heal.

"When will I see him again?" she asked the dragon plaintively. Vadise knew that Sierra was over the worst of her shock and pain, but even so, she didn't think her dragoon could handle the entire truth. In time, she would be told if she did not find out on her own, but she hoped to spare Sierra for as long as she could. A dragoon was there to do her dragon's bidding, and Sierra knew that as well as any. In any case, it was a dragon's responsibility to choose what was best to protect the stones.

She only wished she could be sure Drakonis meant to do the same.

Sierra puttered around, frustrated. "My descent is from the legendary Beast Kingdom," she told the dragon. "They say the kingdom failed when it tried peace. I can't help but fear that good is losing ground to evil in this world."

Vadise had no answer. Sierra was more than a friend, a partner, a joined soul in the same way that the Jumi had created in their knight-guardian bond; but there was a critical difference not found with the Jumi, that derived from the simple imbalance of the creatures involved. The bond could be used to compel and control, to turn a partner into a servant. Her own leash was light, and Jajara's hold over Deathbringer would be strong; but she worried about what Drakonis would do with Larc.

Another thought triggered in the back of her mind. _The dragons, and the Jumi._ Both were keepers of the ancient power of Mana, both trying to preserve it in any way possible, and both suffering in the end, struggling under the burden of a Goddess who did not yet exist, who neither knew or acknowledged them.

Sierra looked away, not wanting Vadise to see her tears, and Vadise only wished she had some hope to give her.


	34. Legends: Darkness

**34: Legends: Darkness**

The tall, craggy mountains known as the Norn Peaks had been encroaching on the edge of their vision for several days of travel already, but now, as they approached the foot, the land sloped gently upwards as if guiding them to the higher slopes. Ariesa perused the peaks above with detached interest, suppressing emotion in favor of cool analysis.

"So this is where it is?" she asked Larc, not taking her eyes away from the mountains ahead. "A Mana Stone?" Larc grimly looked the same way, the skull lantern hanging from his fist.

"One of them," Escad interrupted. "Good a place as any to start."

"Then we have to go," she said.

She was trying to steel herself, trying to reassure herself that she was here for a reason, but a confused ball of feelings kept demanding to be heard. Finally, she was forced to acknowledge, at least slightly, that she was scared, confused, and terribly missing her friends, friends that had become close enough to be called family.

With none of those people around, she was left to reassure herself, berating herself for the courage she felt she was lacking. Stuck in immanence for so long, something new was being demanded of her, and she didn't know what it was she was supposed to be doing, only knowing she had to keep doing it. She wasn't the same person she had been, but every time she tried to wonder who she was becoming, she couldn't form the picture, and it left her with an uncomfortable feeling of a blank future, recoiling her back into the present.

Sounds ahead pulled her from her dark thoughts, as did a call from Larc. He motioned them forward, and the increasingly sparse trees broke apart completely to reveal a peaceful village of birdhouses, nestled snugly against the mountain.

Suddenly invigorated, Ariesa practically squealed with delight, a burst of energy triggering her to run forward into the village. It was filled with bird-like people, some race she had never heard of before, but they welcomed her warmly nonetheless.

"Good winds today," one of the residents greeted her. "Such is the blessings of our god and the mountain."

"God?" she wondered out loud. _Not Goddess?_

"Yes," replied another. "The one who guards the Mana on this mountain. He watches over us. We are proud of the winds from the mountain, and of our guardian spirit."

The speaker's black eyes seemed to gaze into her soul, but there was a sort of comfort to it. There was something about his face that lent her a feeling of serenity, a feeling she had been missing for a while.

_Since_ _before that thing with Pearl_, she realized. She wished she had never gone to Leires, that things had never changed. She wished she could go back to her little house, cooking with Bud and Lisa, planting her garden, and never leaving again.

But Mana had it in for her.

She turned at the sound of her companions' footsteps, they entering the village with somewhat less enthusiasm than she herself had shown. Escad swaggered in, and Larc only looked determined, but it was the entry of the latter that sent the placid village into absolute chaos.

Three birdmen, bearing the signs of age, swooped down to land before Larc together, their three voices speaking as one. "We are the elders of the village," they intoned, their voices echoing off the mountains towering over the village. "This is a place for the living! You are not welcome here! Away with you!" they continued, their voices rising to a panicked shriek.

Larc bore the verbal assault with no break in his composure. "No such luck," he announced in a slightly scornful tone. "Obviously, you know why I am here. Now, are you going to take me to your master, or do I have to force my way through?"

"As if you'll make it to the top of the mountain!" the middle elder announced angrily. "Do you think we know nothing of your plans, dragoon of Drakonis? Do you think we have not had time to make arrangements for this day?" The three flapped their wings angrily, and the clear sky above darkened in moments, a wild wind rising to buffet the village. Ariesa shivered, wrapping her arms around herself, her hair whipping her face with stinging slaps.

An arm grabbed her roughly, and Escad pulled her to him, she stumbling slightly to fall against his chest. As he shielded her with his own body, she turned to see half-mad anger on his face, he not looking at her so much as the elders beyond, his muscled arm bracing his heavy sword futilely against the pounding winds.

Beyond them, Larc's face read impassive, and he rose one hand. A quick wave, and the wind was gone, blue sky returning as if the storm had never been. "Pathetic," he announced gruffly.

"A moment!" called a clear, resounding voice from above. Ariesa saw Larc flinch, and an unidentifiable expression crossed his face, something of regret, fear, and determination.

From an impossible height above, a white-furred wolf-woman leapt lightly down the mountain with quickness and agility to rival a mountain goat. She landed deftly with a flip in the middle of the village, between Larc and the elders.

"Hey! I remember you!" Escad said suddenly, but the newcomer ignored him, focusing her attention on Larc. Her body, her movements, spoke of a fierce warrior, but there was a gentleness to her that stood in stark contrast to the fierceness that bubbled under Larc's surface.

"Who is that? Why is she here? What does she have to do with anything?" Ariesa whispered back, but Escad's attention was still distant.

Larc, for his part, flinched visibly. "Sierra. Long way from the White Forest. Shouldn't you be there to guard Vadise?"

"All the dragons concern me," the newcomer replied haughtily. "Who are you trying to drag into our affairs? The girl, at least, may have some value."

"What's wrong with Escad?" Ariesa wondered. His eyes were still turned away, but oddly, a small smile crossed his face at her response.

Sierra only scowled. "He is… lacking in balance, I think. The Stones will hardly accept him." She directed a pointed gaze at Ariesa. "But you. Why have you agreed to such a thing? Do you not see you are being tricked?"

Ariesa braced, shaking off Escad's grip, and taking a few determined steps towards Sierra. "I see that there is a Mana Stone I need to get to," she replied, pouring the desired courage into her words. "Isn't it true the dragon is keeping it from us?"

"You think the dragons only want to keep Mana for themselves?" Sierra looked smacked for a moment. "You... there is so much you cannot know. But I see telling you now will achieve nothing. You will have to learn another way, and when you do, you won't forget it."

"Sierra," intoned the Windcallers from behind, their voices layering melodiously. Sierra turned in response to their soft, crooning words. "We are the dragoons of Akravator. Let us face this."

In response, Sierra gestured, her hand making the sign of the tree, but finishing over her heart. "I fear the result, Windcallers, but it is your prerogative." She turned to the others. "We shall meet again." With a final, powerful leap, she was gone.

"That was..." Escad left the question hanging. Larc only nodded.

"Who?" demanded Ariesa. "Isn't there something you should tell me?"

Larc turned to her, and there was dead sadness in his eyes. "Someone. Someone I miss dearly. Do you want me to tell you more?"

Ariesa averted her eyes uncomfortably. "I guess not," she replied, and Larc returned his attention to the Windcallers.

"Well. What is your answer?" he demanded.

There was no hesitancy in the voices of the elders. "We shall await you on the mountain, dragoon of Drakonis. Death awaits you." With a flurry of feathers, they were gone, leaving the path open, and no sound except the whimpering of the younger birds.

"Tough customers," noted Escad.

"That's why you're here," Larc replied, addressing Ariesa. "This won't be an easy climb."

"It never is," she sighed.

------------------------------------

Lisa sat with Pearl by the fire. Bud and Daena were already well asleep, and Elazul was pretending he was, but every once in a while an eye would open to check on the two of them.

Pearl only sighed, poking the fire with a long, thick stick. They were very close to entering the snowfields proper, but already the chill was in the air.

"I am worried," Lisa admitted reluctantly. Pearl only gave her a small, sad look, having no encouragement to provide.

The light was at first barely visible next to the light of the fire, and Lisa might not have noticed it had Pearl's head not swiveled towards it. Near it, other lights popped into existence, and as they grew closer, they silently resolved themselves into fairies.

Elazul quietly slipped out of his bedroll to squat warily near his guardian, who was staring with nearly as much fascination as Lisa herself was. She had never seen _one_, period, before, much less several, and never this close before.

"Why are you letting us see you?" she blurted out despite herself.

The fairies ignored her outburst, addressing the Jumi instead. "Greetings," one began. "I am Alcione. You are searching for someone, are you not?"

"What makes you think so?" asked Elazul warily, hand balled in a fist as if to avoid grabbing his sword hilt.

"It is easy enough to tell, for us. We have seen her in the company of another we have reason to keep an eye on, the one who calls himself Holy Knight."

"Escad." Elazul's voice was flat.

"Indeed, though we dared not get too close." confirmed the fairy.

"Is she in danger?" asked Pearl worriedly.

"Not yet," responded Alcione. "She is… more _of_ a danger, I think, at the moment. It matters not. You must find her nevertheless, and you are going the wrong way."

"I don't think so," Elazul said.

"Suit yourself," the fairy shrugged.

"What is she doing?" asked Lisa, worried. What the fairy had said was bothering her, and she didn't really get what was going on.

"She is… being tested, I think," Alcione told Lisa. "She is too light, too monochromatic. Just as the Holy Knight is dark and must become lighter. He pulls us and repulses us at the same time."

Elazul started to say something, then thought better of it.

The fairy turned to go, but Elazul cried, "Wait!" and she paused.

He swallowed nervously. "Irwin was looking for her, too, wasn't he?"the Jumi began. "And… me as well? You were watching us for him," he accused.

"I suppose you would see it," she replied, looking suddenly sad. "It is not the simple case you wish to make. We were once of the Goddess, and with Her loss now fallen from grace. We cling to whatever we can find of Mana to try and find our way. Irwin, yes, but others who pull us, who have a sparkle of _something_ in them." She looked rather pointedly at Elazul as she said this.

He turned away, and despite the darkness, Lisa could have sworn she saw the faintest hint of a blush. "I guess that makes sense," she admitted.

Lisa could only stare in fascination, but to her surprise, the fairy flitted towards her. She found herself holding her breath, as Alcione traversed a path around her head, stopping uncomfortably close to Lisa's face. "And you, young one," the fairy said. "Are you finding the power you seek?"

"Maybe," Lisa mumbled, dropping her eyes.

"Do not be afraid," Alcione said soothingly, and Lisa looked at her, a bit startled. "We can sense… things… about you, you and your brother both." She motioned to where Bud lay fast asleep, neatly missing the entire scenario. "We find the two of you… interesting." And with a wink Lisa though she might have imagined, Alcione and her companions disappeared.

"What was she talking about?" Lisa nervously addressed both the Jumi, but Elazul was only gazing off into the distance silently. Pearl scooted closer to her, and though she was only slightly taller than Lisa herself, when she wrapped an arm around the elven girl, Lisa suddenly embraced Pearl as if she was the mother she missed dearly. Before she knew it, she was sobbing into the Jumi woman's neckline.

"What is it?" Pearl asked gently.

Lisa didn't have an answer, really, but she knew how she felt. "I'm scared," she admitted. "About what's going on, what's going to happen, what's going to happen to Bud and me…" She trailed off into a fresh rain of tears.

Pearl just stayed _there_, and for that, Lisa was grateful. "I don't know, Lisa, I really don't know," she replied gently. "But whatever it is, we'll be there for each other, right?"

Slowly, Lisa calmed, as if absorbing Pearl's own manner. Faintly, she sensed… a trickle of Mana, and wondered if it was Pearl's core. If a Jumi could remain hopeful still… well, then so could she.

------------------------------------

The chill deepened as they climbed the mountain trail. Ariesa thought that after the otherworldly sweltering heat of the underworld, she would be grateful, but in fact it only made her colder, biting just as the heat burned.

Larc led the way, Escad following behind, making her feel uncomfortably surrounded. The path twisted and turned, snaking up the mountain in an unpredictable fashion. Larc abruptly turned onto a smaller offshoot to the right, offering no explanation for the detour, following the slender trail through rock formations towering over them.

Ariesa wondered at the detour, but reached no conclusions before their opponent appeared. One of the birdmen of the village floated eerily above ground, and when he spoke, his voice echoed as if there was someone else behind it.

"_You_!" he cried. "You know nothing of what you face. We are the Windcallers, the dragoons to Akravator. As promised, I am here to stop you, bastard minions."

Larc said nothing, merely pulling out his axe, the weapon poised in readiness.

The Windcaller observed its opponent sadly. "So be it," it intoned. "I must warn you, you have no chance against the powers of the wind. The village was only a warning."

The bird whirled in midair, its body stirring the air around it into a cyclone of tremendous force. Both Ariesa and Escad stumbled, knocked off balance; Escad fell to his knees, grasping for his fallen sword some distance away. Ariesa braced herself, leaning into the gale, but as she reached for her own sword, she realized it was a futile gesture.

Larc, however, seemed to barely feel the onslaught, as he dove forward into the pounding winds. The bird shrieked, and rose into the air gracefully, flapping its wings to send another blast of wind towards the trio once again.

Larc bided his time, bracing against the attacks, until the bird noticeably weakened, falling slightly towards the ground, trying to keep itself airborne in a half-hearted manner. It struggled for height, and that's when Larc's axe struck.

The weapon cleaved into the back of the creature, and Ariesa tried to quell her nausea as it crumpled to the ground, spine clearly snapped in half. It let out one long sigh as it flapped its wings, then seemed to settle into a sort of dignified peace.

Escad reached for her arm in a friendly gesture. "You okay?" She nodded, but shrugged his touch off, not trusting herself to answer, looking towards the deceased body on the ground before her. The peaceful sky above seemed to mock the destruction below, and she wondered what sort of world she lived in, that such violence was needed to reach the holy power of Mana.

------------------------------------

The path crept upward, finally breaking through the shadow of the mountain into sunlight, which Ariesa was grateful for. The view stretched beyond her, seeming to go on for all eternity, and it gave her a moment to forget, and to think.

Behind her, she ignored Escad's calls and Larc's gruff shouts for as long as she could get away with, then wheeled around with a sigh to continue the ascent upwards.

She had barely taken a few steps towards her waiting companions, when a wild whoosh was all the warning she got as another one of the Windcallers swept down upon them, nose-diving towards her. Instinctively, she brought her arms up to protect her face as it slammed into her, knocking the breath out of her as she fell to the ground.

It recovered instantly, rising above the ground as had the other, and as it called to the wind once again, winds rose whipping around her. The storm was ever more violent than the one before, shrieking winds accompanied by pounding rain and sleet, the icy particles pounding her skin mercilessly. She rolled out of the brunt of it all, curling up instinctively to protect herself, and in an instant, Escad was there beside her.

The bird above them wailed, a jarring cry of passion and frustration. "Know the power of the Windcallers, dragoons of Akravator!" it cried to the human bothering it. Escad's hair whipped in the torrent and he struggled for footing on the slick stone, but his heavy sword cleaved through the winds easily, striking true even as the bird dove and dodged his strikes.

Some distance away, Larc had his axe out, poised and ready for battle, but could make no headway against the powerful winds. Ariesa struggled to her feet, every muscle tensing to force her upwards. She managed to stand, barely, but could barely get her own sword out of its sheath, never mind make any headway against the creature. Wobbling, she took a few steps back, hands and body pressing against the rocks behind her, desperately looking for an opening.

There was little need, as Escad confronted their foe with all of his strength. Watching him from afar, she realized he truly was a master with his sword. Neatly ignoring the storm, his sword sliced though the air, deftly catching a wing feather here, a clawed foot there. It squealed and bled with every hit, the slightest nick still wearing it down, the deeper cuts noticeably weakening it.

Escad pressed the attack single-mindedly, attention on nothing but the battle before him. Finally, he scored a clean hit, slashing the front of the Windcaller's body open in a deadly blow. The bird tumbled to the ground before them, the storm breaking in an instant as before, and the clouds returning to lazy white puffs instead of the angry gray blobs.

Unlike its predecessor, this one did not go gently into death, and it squealed a piercing cry that echoed down the mountainside and off the valley below. It squirmed and wrenched its body contorting in utter denial of the inevitable, until with a final flurry of wings, it lay still as last.

Escad knelt down and touched the bird, checking for a pulse. "Its spirit is gone as well, I think."

Larc snorted, looking at the corpse before him. "They'll do anything in their power to stop us from getting to the Mana Stone."

Ariesa stood back, her sodden hair and clothes dripping quietly onto the ground below. "That can't be allowed," she whispered, more to herself than to anyone else. Without checking to see if the men were following, she turned back up the path with grim determination.

------------------------------------

Clouds settled around them as the air grew thinner, and Ariesa had long since given up on looking down. The view below was sheltered from her eyes, and she had a feeling she probably didn't want to see all the way down anyway. Instead, she focused her eyes resolutely on the path straight ahead of her, and though the sky was clear, a vague sense of undetermined dread seemed to rest on her, like the calm before the storm.

Still, she was not entirely prepared as the third of the elders of the village swooped down, its fury resonating with the skies above as dark clouds suddenly filled the sky, crackling lightning heralding its arrival. In an instant, she whipped out her sword, gripping it in her hand in readiness.

The Windcaller dove towards her, recoiling back at the last instant to stop in midair. The storm faded, and it spoke. Its voice was high, lilting, almost feminine, and full not of anger, only sadness. "Why does Drakonis seek the power of Mana?" she asked. "Why does he desire our Stone so strongly that he will take the life of our master to claim it?"

"A dragoon follows the will of his master, as you well know," Larc replied, joining Ariesa on the right. "It is not my place to question the will of one of the Dragons of Knowledge."

"Drakonis will never be wise enough to deserve that title," the Windcaller scolded him. "But you are correct about the dragoon serving the master, and I am ready to defend him with my life."

"Then so be it," Larc said, bracing in readiness. Out of the corner of the eye, she saw Escad do the same, pulling his heavy broadsword with both hands; and a sudden, mad thought overtook her. "Let me," she told Larc. "By myself."

Escad opened his mouth as if to protest, but Larc only nodded thoughtfully. From above, the Windcaller bowed respectfully to her. "So be it, then. I will honor your agreement."

Without warning, lightning and thunder roared over them once again, striking the ground all around them. Larc and Escad dove as one for cover, but Ariesa was surprised and trapped in the open, with nowhere to go. She tensed in fear, but the storm fell away, and she looked up at the bird in surprise.

"I had no desire to hurt you," the Windcaller said softly.

"I can't back down," said Ariesa regretfully.

"I know," the bird sighed, its jet-black eyes peering into her human ones. "If it must be done, then we will do it with honor." Ariesa waved one hand to Larc and Escad to remain behind.

Ariesa nodded, and clenched her sword, and let all her senses drift into that one piece of metal all over again. It flowed smoothly, its weight moving with her like a dance, every few strikes neatly grazing her enemy.

The Windcaller squealed at the first contact of the sword, and fluttering backwards, she seemed to… change. Ariesa understood as soon as the bird's wing swiped her skin, the feathers now razor-sharp. The bird attacked with feathers and claws, every once in a while one cleaving Ariesa's skin with a cut that was barely noticed, but stung nevertheless.

Some small part of her mind told her that those cuts were starting to bleed, but the feeling was barely acknowledged, an instinctive part of her mind pushing it down as a problem for later. Her entire being responded without thought. The bird dove low; she neatly leaped over the attack. It struck high, and she calmly slid underneath, all the while looking for her opening.

Finally, it came. The Windcaller dove awkwardly, leaving its chest open, and with a sharp pang of regret, Ariesa neatly drove her sword into its heart.

Its wings drooped immediately, and the sudden weight on her sword pulled both the weapon and its owner forward forcefully. Her mortally injured opponent slid to the ground, leaving a smear of fresh blood marking the length of Ariesa's blade. She leaned over the dying bird, ignoring Larc's command to get away and Escad's stern expression.

"You have much honor," the elder told Ariesa in a peaceful voice. "You were a worthy opponent, whatever your reasons are."

"I'm sorry," she couldn't help but whisper.

"No matter. I will return to the winds once again," the Windcaller replied. "But you must know, this is the last stand. From here there is no turning back from Akravator's fury. Are you sure you know what you are getting yourself into?"

Ariesa's head dropped slightly. "I'm… I'm not sure. I'm just doing the best I can."

The bird seemed sympathetic. "Sometimes, our best is not enough."

Those were the last words she spoke, as her head lolled to the side, black avian eyes glazing over. It was the third corpse they had left on the mountain, and the thought of returning down to see those crumpled bodies, now emptied of souls, suddenly made Ariesa sick.

She erased the expression from her face, and stoically faced her companions, but they bore strange matching expressions - Larc to the right, and Escad to the left. Sympathy, and doubt. Just like what she felt on the inside.

It wasn't a feeling she enjoyed, so she hardened herself for the grisly work that was to come next. "Let's go. A dragon and his Mana are waiting for us."

------------------------------------

The wide trail slimmed to a narrow, rocky path, and beyond, a cliff. As they approached, Ariesa could see that it extended to a narrow promontory point, much thinner that the awkward outcropping of rock that supported Gato's Temple of Healing, so frail that she suspected it would barely hold even one person.

But it held much more than that.

A dragon sat between them and the edge.

She barely noticed him at first, his gray-blue scales blending neatly in with the icy rocks as he sat stone-still, so to speak. She started as the dragon uncoiled from his perch on the cliff. An enormous, hard shell-encased head surrounded his face with spiky protrusions, and as his wings stretched, they briefly blotted out the sun than shone from behind him, casting a dark shadow over herself and her companions.

Ariesa has never seen a _true_ dragon before, and after the little dragon-like monsters she was used to beating up on, Akravator was... impressive.

Larc strode forward, eyes fixated on the creature they had climbed so high to find. "Akravator, I have come for your Mana in my master's stead!"

The dragon flicked his tail in response, unimpressed. It spoke, and its voice was a deep near-growl that nearly dwarfed the mountain it sat on. "So Vadise told me might happen. If only Jajara, leader he would like to be, had listened to her a little closer. Do you, dragoon, know what he is plotting?"

"No matter," Larc replied with nonchalance.

"I suppose not. If not free will, then fear is still allowed to a dragoon; yet you have yet to learn fear. You will find it soon enough." The dragon flicked his tail towards the others. "You, Holy Knight, you know little of holiness. And you," he said, motioning to Ariesa.

She felt suddenly as if her soul was being probed, as that huge black eye turned towards her, and looking into the iris, she felt like she could see… more than she had ever seen before. Memories seemed to want to surface, bubbling up, but never popping.

"You just don't know," the dragon told her.

"Don't know what?" Ariesa felt herself nearly cringing, trying to escape the force of what she was seeing.

He broke the gaze for a second, then returned to it, thankfully a little less intently. "Exactly. You don't know what you should know. You don't know many things that don't matter, and you don't know many more that do."

"No more!" Larc bellowed. "Akravator, the underworld awaits you!"

"I do not care to see Drakonis quite so soon," the dragon replied with nonchalance.

Sheer force was what first drove Akravator forward, and he plowed full force into Larc, sending him skidding nearly over the edge. Ariesa threw herself to the ground, seeing Escad dodge just in time to avoid Larc's fate.

Larc pulled himself to hands and knees, shaking his head to clear it, as Akravator neatly alighted on the precipice. His great neck swing forward, the razor-sharp spines that surrounded his head whistling through the air.

Escad saw it first, and dropped one knee to the ground to slice towards Akravator's neck. He only grazed, but the dragon roared nonetheless, flapping enormous wings to lift himself into the air once again.

"So this is the lengths to which Drakonis will go to?" he growled. "Then face the full force of my vengeance!"

The storm that crashed on them was like nothing they had experienced from the dragoons. With a clap of thunder, wind and rain poured over them, the roar loud enough to drown Akravator's laughter, the dragon hovering as if nothing was amiss.

Ariesa saw Larc trying to stand, but collapsing once again, teetering dangerously close to the edge. Crawling over, sword still in one hand and the other grabbing the odd handhold on the rocky ground, she pulled herself over, and driving the sword into its sheath, grabbed with all her might to pull Larc away from the edge.

Escad saw, and took the brunt of the attacks to cover her, defensively dodging the dragon's long talons and barely holding his own as the wind and rain pounded against his chest. "I can't stop him by myself!" he cried over the roar.

Larc tumbled forward, and shook his head to clear it, forcing himself to his feet. He out of danger, Ariesa turned to join Escad, the rain slicking her hair against her body and washing the dried blood of the Windcaller away, but Larc grabbed her elbow roughly, pulling her ear close to his mouth. "There is only one thing that will kill a dragon," he told her. "An unbalancing of Mana."

"How?" Ariesa asked, looking at him in surprise. She heard a cry, and out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Escad hit, but still holding his ground.

"Cover me. Distract the dragon," he told her, and Ariesa nodded.

She leaped into the fray, antagonizing the dragon's right side, while Escad continued to pummel the left. Akravator snarled, whirling to see the new nuisance, tail whipping around to send a hail of water in her direction, drenching her from head to toe. Escad rolled to miss the hit by that enormous appendage, and she hurriedly rubbed the water out of her eyes before the dragon could attack again.

Not a moment too soon. Whatever kind words he might have had for her earlier were gone, his visage contorted into simple anger. His head darted for her, the long, muscular neck whipping around with tremendous strength.

She struck at the vulnerable eyes and nose, but a quick twist of the head by Akravator, and her sword met the wicked ring of spines, the bony protrusions knocking the sword out of her hand. It skidded far out of her reach, just barely stopping before it fell off the mountain's edge. Panicked, she saw Escad truing to reach her from behind the dragon, but he could not get through as Akravator's body wriggled wildly.

The cold wetness of the rocks behind her met her back, she not even realizing she had stepped backwards. She pressed on them instinctively, a quick look to each side showing there was nowhere to run. Akravator had her neatly cornered.

"So," he told her. "You will not listen to reason." Ariesa faced the dragon, too stunned for any response. "Very well, then." He opened his jaws, and Ariesa gasped as she found herself staring down into the dragon's maw, those enormous jaws heading closer and closer to her head.

Suddenly the dragon wailed, and as he twisted, Ariesa saw where Escad had neatly driven his sword into the dragon's tail tip and the dirt below, pinning the creature to the ground.

Akravator flailed wildly, flapping his wings to hover slightly above ground. His bellow pierced her ears, but suddenly turned to ear-splitting pain, and from the precipice beyond a light broke through the storm-ravaged skies. The dragon's sudden weakness wrote itself across the skies, as the clouds flickered, blue sky sneaking through.

The sudden rays of sun showed Ariesa something ahead, at the point of the cliff. Larc stood there, and behind him, the stone of Mana glowed, he filling with its energy. Ariesa didn't know _how_ she knew, but she knew that Larc had the power of the Stone, now, and he was cutting the dragon off from it.

Akravator turned his head, looking towards Larc. "Fool!" he wailed. "You know what happens when you throw a Mana Stone out of balance?"

"Yes," Larc replied. The Stone brightened to the brilliance of the sun, and the last of the dragon's strength drained out of him.

Akravator collapsed with a howl that dwarfed the cries of the Windcallers below, and his body crashed against the cliff side, rattling the mountains to the base below, as Ariesa stumbled and only barely caught her balance. The echoes of his death throes still permeated as the skies cleared fully once again, the clouds seeming almost relieved that it was finally done.

Wet and exhausted, Ariesa wandered with trepidation onto the thin ledge that housed the Mana Stone, wondering if perhaps the will of the dragon had been all that held it up. She flashed back to Gato once again, and that reminded her of Elazul. Suddenly, she missed him terribly.

Larc stood calmly, gazing at the object of their voyage. Despite the piercing light it had produced, it now seemed almost… anticlimactic, a shiny piece of stone, not so brilliant as a Jumi core, and barely the size of a person.

"Hmm…" Larc said, appraisingly. "Larger than I thought, but not as large as I could have hoped," Larc noted.

"It's gathering energy," Escad replied, looking around randomly, thought it wasn't clear at what. "Can't you feel it?"

_Not at all_, was Ariesa's gut response, but she paused, and tried to focus. She had felt a bit of it trying to reach for those memories… this was something different… There was one spot, that if she reached just so…

With a snap, it came into focus. "It's true," she breathed. She could suddenly feel it from all directions, like stinging prickles on her skin combined with the soothing touch of warm water. It felt like…

It felt like a Jumi core.

Not any one's in particular – _not like Elazul's_, she thought, chiding herself for the thought - just that sense of contact and feeling, of seeing beyond oneself. She stood, carefully, now entranced by the stone crystallizing before her, and breathed deeply, as if she could take the Stone's power into herself. "Is this… the power of Mana?" she asked herself softly. With trepidation, she stretched out a hand.

And as suddenly as that, the connection snapped. She shook her head, suddenly feeling very empty.

Larc came up beside her. "I've drained all I can from it right now. I suppose it won't respond for a little bit."

Ariesa gave him a _look_, and he only looked back quizzically, not understanding. She chose not to speak; she didn't think she'd like anything he might say at this time.

Out of the corner of the eye, she saw Escad climbing the steep, skinny slope towards them, carrying something long and white. Not his sword. But as he approached, she realized what it was. Ariesa chose not to contemplate how he had gotten it out, or why there was no blood on the sword now strapped to his back once again.

Escad dumped his treasure unceremoniously before Larc. "What is that?" Larc said, looking at the item in question with a bit of distaste.

"A wing bone," Escad replied. "You were expecting a whole skull, maybe? The dragon barely held together from your holding spell for me to get this out, before it disappeared completely. Not like bones of the dragons of knowledge are just around for the taking, you know."

Larc grunted. "It'll do. Escad, you call it. This could lead us to Vadise, or to Jajara, the bone dragon himself."

Escad thought a moment. "Jajara," he replied. "Let's have a bit of a challenge, and save the easy one for a break afterward."

"Fair enough," Larc replied. "Ariesa, are you ready? We'll get back down the mountain, and then take a shortcut from there. To the next stone, or close enough."

Ariesa moved wordlessly in the direction Larc pointed, not acknowledging either. She didn't know where they were going, what they were doing… but suddenly she felt very alone.

------------------------------------

Escad found himself up late. It was the damn fairies again; as if it wasn't enough that he thought he saw them everywhere, now they flickered into his dreams as well. He pulled himself up in his blankets, turning to look over at Ariesa.

She had taken some time to get to sleep, he knew; her tossing and turning had kept him up for quite some time as well, almost as bad as Larc's snoring. Finally, however, it seemed she had settled into something resembling restful sleep.

He felt a bit sorry for her. She had said barely a word since coming down the mountain, but it was easy enough to figure out what she was thinking. He was only grateful that the corpses of the Windcallers had disappeared as Akravator's had, like the creatures of Mana they were.

_She's young, far too young to see ugly things_, he thought to himself. _The world will beat that out of her soon enough, when she discovers how ugly people are. Like Matilda did._

She was young, and quite beautiful, he thought. He had certainly had his share of women before going to the Underworld, and a pretty barmaid in Wendel had done a good job of satisfying ten years of craving when he got back.

He knew he would never love anyone like he had loved Matilda; she had accepted him so absolutely, whatever his moods or faults. It made him jealous, how she could see people that way, even if it had been her undoing.

But that's not to say he didn't enjoy the company of others.

The blankets curved to her figure, and he could picture the outline of her body underneath. They had slipped off one shoulder, and just that barest glimpse of flesh was driving him absolutely mad.

His body stirred. He thought for a minute of walking over to her and pulling off those blankets; it would be so easy. He pictured her dreamily waking up, her soft brown eyes looking up at him, and her arms reaching for him.

He hadn't even realized that one hand was gripping his own blankets tightly, ready to throw them off. His heart was pounding, but he took a deep breath and forced himself to settle down. Now was not the time.

They both were here for the same reason, more or less. Of course… she did not know that she couldn't leave.

_He_ did, but he had known from the start what sort of bargain he was making. Freedom from the Underworld did not free one from certain… obligations.

They were both pretty much screwed, and stuck.

------------------------------------

Elazul stood staring across the snowfields, lost in deep thought. Vaguely, he sketched out his geography in his head; this had been called the Field of Innocence, and it was said the path one followed from here determined one's direction in life. He wished he could feel some of that, but he felt his direction was set for good.

Pearl came up next to him, and touched two fingertips lightly to his core, in the ancient Jumi gesture of both friendship and love. He could have laughed. _I'm sworn to take care of a guardian, and here she is taking care of me._

Still, her presence was a comfort, as it always had been. And Old Jumi saying was that a knight's job was to wake a stone guardian by finding the keys to her heart… metaphorically, of course; it meant allowing her to find the Mana inside her core.

But truly, it had been much more the other direction with he and she. She could not find what was lost within herself, in the years that she had spent as his guardian. Yet Pearl had helped to melt his own frozen heart, a heart that had sealed itself off to be as hard as his core, giving him purpose, giving him courage, giving him emotions.

Whatever would happen with her... with them... the past would always be. That's why the pale girl stood beside him now, obviously shivering from the cold.

_I found you in the desert, Pearl. But here was where I was found._

He didn't need to tell her. That much of his history, she knew; though he only knew himself because someone else had told _him_.

"You were found in the snowfields, on Queen Altena's Hill," Sappho had told him, right before Elazul had left on his own. "I didn't think there would be more Jumi."

Elazul had been a child then, a child who thought he was a man, that just _looking_ grown was enough; every unformed, misused emotion reflected in his core like a light.

But even unprepared, it was time to move on, and even had he wished to return, no one knew where Sappho had gone. Now, unfortunately, he could figure out the answer.

"What are we doing?" Pearl asked.

The question was rhetorical, her tone of voice asking for comfort rather than truth; but he answered her anyway. He always found it hard to say no to that hope in her eyes. He always wanted to _fix_ things for her when he saw it, wishing he would let him absorb some of her hope for himself. He had tried that for so long, but now… now, there was no pretending.

"We're trying to find something of Mana," he gently reminded her. "That's what Ariesa went to look for. But we don't know what she might be trying to find. You're the only one who might know."

He flinched at the sadness that too over her face. "I... I _know_, Elazul," she replied. "But... It's not that I'm scared... I can't..."

He shouldn't have brought it up. If she didn't yet understand Blackpearl, how would _he_? It was a vain hope. "It's alright," he told his guardian, trying for something resembling reassurance.

She was something else, he realized, not only his guardian any longer; despite all he wished for her, it still felt like a loss. What was he to her, if not her protector?

He suddenly was overcome by a wave of dizziness, and stumbled slightly despite himself. He felt Pearl's hand on his back, as if she could hold him up. "Elazul! What is it? Does your core hurt again?"

"No…" he lied. The dizziness passed as soon as it had come, and he straightened as if nothing had happened. He smiled at her encouragingly, but she didn't buy it. The bond did not lie, and she frowned at him.

Her expression did not change, and he felt the need to say something encouraging. "Maybe Ariesa and Escad are doing better. For now, we just go where we think might be."

Pearl's gaze followed his. The Norn Peaks.


	35. Secrets: Ghosts

**35: Secrets: Ghosts**

Ricrot wrapped his own cloak around her shoulders, for which Anuella was grateful. As many years as she had lived in the far north, the Fieg Snowfields were still the coldest of the cold. She was grateful for any sort of warmth, and only part of it was from the garment.

It helped fill the gap Selva had left behind. Years of war, years of struggle, had changed them both, in some ways more than she would believe. She still heard from him often enough; the lilipeas brought her the news he sent to her, news he heard from the birds he spoke to so naturally, in a way even she herself could not understand.

It was ironic, any way one looked at it. She never thought that she might find herself on the side of a Forcenan after all this time. Or even more, that she was falling in love with him.

Lonway led the mages now, the elder brother of Ricrot and heir to Forcena, a nation that had been a conglomeration of states for as long as anyone could remember. The brothers had never agreed on the direction of their country, Ricrot wanting to return closer to the Goddess as Anuella wanted, and Lonway siding with the view of the mages that had once followed Anise, that any Mana available should be grasped and utilized in the name of survival.

The rift between the two was what drove Ricrot to her side. Forcena proper was undoubtedly the center of the kingdom over which they argued. Lonway was the legal heir, but Anuella knew that practically, it made little difference.

The reality was, Forcena had long since been an empire in truth, no matter how it tried to maintain the pretense of equality among its subservient states. The people had called it "Empire" for years already, and Lonway already styled himself "Emperor". A single man, with that much control over the world… it troubled her more than she could say.

Ricrot only teased her when she voiced her concern. "I love it how you use the old names, Anuella. Forcena and Byzel. We have new names, for a new world, and we both have a new home within it."

He was right, whether she liked it or not. They could not pretend things were the same; and her home was with him, now, for better or for worse. They traveled with the fairies, but he was the one she clung to, little else left for her. She had given her mountain school to Akravator long ago, and she and Selva had helped him breed, mix, create the Windcallers that now inhabited it as the Village of the Winds.

There had been a twenty-odd year period of peace since she had destroyed the Wyrm Geimaswald; the thing had been nothing compared to the Wyrm that her own allies had released. Lucemia still haunted her nightmares, a dragon demon-spawn that only was removed from the world because of its own ambition. It had consumed a volcano, burning to ash as the fire burned it from within, destroying every bit of flesh to leave nothing but a charred corpse. Its bones had clattered to the island beneath it, the first series of the Faerie Wars ending along with its unearthly life. But she knew then, as she knew now, that all was not over.

The victory was theirs, but the essential point remained. Mana was increasing, but still scarce, and the world was still populated by those who craved it.

It was why the Jumi had disappeared. She felt like she owed Lady Blackpearl an apology on behalf of the world. Anuella fingered a medallion around her neck, a parting gift from Blackpearl, and a token of their agreement and shared goals. She could only assume the Jumi woman was still alive; all she heard was rumors of Jumi gathering, heading somewhere where the wars could not touch them.

As things had turned out, it had been too much to hope for that the departure of the Jumi would have ended the wars for good. Humans fought on, now devoid of the healing powers of those angels they had chosen to hunt, the carnage ever increasing. In any case, the Jumi were now thankfully isolated, left to maintain the memories of the goddess, as they were always meant to.

It pained her that the Jumi had been lost to the world, at the very time the world might have needed them, their love, the love of the Goddess, the most. If she had her way, she would have made Blackpearl the Wisdom of the Moon, brought her into being part of those who were shaping the future without the Goddess for better or for worse.

The Jumi should have been a part of that, but… the world thought otherwise.

They had indeed been angels, angels of healing, and the world had driven them away along with any other vestige of the Goddess. They had forgotten Her, lost only in their fears of what might be, nothing of hope. That era was over, as was the era where the Jumi had been known as the race of friendship.

Once, the act of becoming Jumi had been a form of heroism, something to be admired, both the search for that sliver of the Goddess and the ability to survive Her transformation powerful experiences for the recipient. Now… few sought to become Jumi, when the race was called "dirt" and almost universally reviled.

All their energy, all the Mana expended, to revive others… it had _cost_, even more so as the hunting began, and they weakened further as they revived each other from their cores, again and again. Mana was still scarce, and it took all the Jumi had to keep the race alive. They no longer healed anyone other than their own, and the world denigrated them for it.

That was the way it was, in this day and age. The Tree, the Goddess, was nothing but a ghost… and She could do nothing to help any of them. As helpless as Anuella herself, once the most powerful woman in the world, now entirely unable to stop the things she herself had helped set in motion.

She had little motivation anymore. Now, she no longer led, she merely followed. "Where to next?" she asked her companion.

"South," Ricrot replied. "Towards the desert. There are reports of the mages gathering there, not far from Mindas."

_Mindas_. A name Anuella had not heard in some time. There was only one reason why Lonway might choose that spot. "There might still be enough magic for him to enter the land of the fairies through the tower there," she told him, her voice quavering. Lucemia had destroyed most of the towers the mages had constructed in its rampage, but the tower at Mindas, now known as the Tower of the Winds, was one that had resisted complete destruction. The gateway there was simply too powerful, and if that was Lonway's goal…

"Since when has magic been something that scared you away?" Ricrot asked, teasingly, and Anuella wished she could absorb some of his confidence. It might help to wipe out the feeling of dread within her.

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It was nothing but a slim strand of land, visible in the distance, that linked Mindas to the desert of Navarre.

Navarre as a kingdom, or something like it, was gone, having assimilated into the rest of the world and disappearing into the proverbial sands of time. The land, however, remained, unchanged, the sweltering desert trailing down to the sea.

Anuella walked that border now, both metaphorically and literally. To her right, the desolate sands, and to the left, the calm blue waters of the ocean. Behind her, some distance to the north, the suffering kingdom of Rolante, and to the south, before her…

She knew Lonway and the mages were somewhere there, and that was what she was brooding over.

A splash in the waters pulled her from her brooding thoughts. She turned to the rollicking waves, from which emerged… a giant turtle. " 'Ello, young'un," the creature said in a friendly manner.

Anuella flinched in surprise. "Who are you? Where did you come from?" she blurted out, momentarily losing her ordinary composure.

"Well, to the first…" the turtle replied, "I come from beyond the sea."

"Which sea?"

"Why… any of them. All of them. Wherever the Goddess takes me."

Suddenly Anuella felt it, that vague sense of Mana, connection to the Goddess. She had a little of it herself, but nothing like this… turtle? It was a creature of the Goddess herself, she knew.

"Who are you?" she repeated, shakily, once again.

"Do names really matter?" the turtle asked, cocking its head once again. "I've had all sorts of names over the years. The sillier, the better, as far as I'm concerned." It sighed. "Might as well pick one at random. Tote. How's that?"

"Good as any, I suppose," agreed Anuella.

"You asked why am here?" the turtle responded. Anuella nodded slightly. "I am here to become one of the Wisdoms."

Anuella was… surprised, to say the least. No one had ever approached her on this subject quite so abruptly. "A Wisdom?" she repeated not sure what else to say.

"Of Water, I think. That's still open, right?" Tote looked back at the ocean behind him (or her). "And as for why… because water is one of those fundamental elements of mixed chaos and order, and it demands someone close to the Goddess, who understands these truths. Like the dragon who guards the Water Stone. Do you disagree?"

That sudden, penetrating insight into Mana was something she heard from few individuals nowadays – human, or otherwise. This turtle - She could find no fault with the perception of Mana that Tote understood. "I will be glad to have you with us," she announced, wondering how much of the world understood Mana still.

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Selva stumbled through the jungle that surrounded the city of Mindas, cursing Anuella under his breath for bringing him here.

The attack on the mages had perhaps been ill-fated from the start. They had underestimated the strength their foe had gained under Lonway's direction, whatever power the emperor had drawn on obliterating Selva's forces. Perhaps it was simply Mana beginning to show its teeth.

The lilipeas, his loyal companions, had scattered at his order upon that first attack. Selva, once a dragoon, was no stranger to the art of war; and immediately recognizing the odds, he had no wish for them to die there. The peaceful creatures had no chance against the magic attacks that were unleashed. They disappeared into the foliage once again, leaving Selva exposed, and alone.

The remaining human and faerie forces had been soundly trounced, leading to Selva now escaping through the jungle. He was avidly pursued by Rosiotti, Lonway's foremost archer, the crunch of brush behind him indicating his foe was altogether too close. The man was a loose cannon, and his motivations in joining the mages were unclear, but that hardly mattered at the moment. He was skilled, and determined to pursue Selva to the death.

"Anuella's not here, you can't hide behind her skirts now," Rosiotti's voice called mockingly. The archer's laughter echoed in his head as Selva broke through the trees, finding himself in the midst of the Mindas ruins.

Picking a direction at random, he ran with all the speed he could muster, sending out a thought to the cancun birds to rescue him; but on this side of the ruins, the jungle had started to take over, and the foliage was too thick for the birds to descend. He was a short man, and he knew the long-legged archer would catch up soon.

He looked around in panic, as he realized he had reached a dead end. Frantically, he looked for a way out, as the footsteps behind him came closer. Perhaps in response to his wish, a fairy flickered, one he did not recognize. It did not matter. "This way!" she motioned, and a path appeared magically through the trees.

He dove, but before the jungle overtook him, he found himself tumbling forward at the _thunk_ of an arrow penetrating his back. Shock setting in, he reached around and pulled the arrow out of himself, rolling face up and glancing down at the hole it had torn through his chest. The pain was beginning to set in, and he knew a lung had been punctured as his breath came out in a gurgling wheeze, life trying to force its way through.

He lay there, trying to figure out if he was in fact alive or dead. He was pretty certain he was dead. The arrow has torn into his heart as well, he could feel his body giving out, and it had stopped hurting.

But somehow, awareness of the forest around persisted, hazily. He could hear Rosiotti coming closer to inspect his prize. And beyond that, he could sense a familiar presence.

The lilipeas slowly trickled out of the foliage where they had been hidden, chirping sadly. He felt his body being lifted by perhaps dozens of them, and a sense of motion as they took him to… where, he did not know.

He was going somewhere, he knew, but it was not to the Underworld quite yet.

----------------------------------------

Anuella knew what was coming. She had felt the emotions of the lilipeas over miles of their travel, and to a lesser extent, the worries of the fairies. Their sadness seemed to permeate the jungle itself, surrounding her and filling her with dread.

But no matter how she steeled herself, her heart still dropped when the moment came.

Ricrot came up behind her, trying to comfort her, but she wrenched herself free of his arms and ran to the lilipeas, and the burden they carried. _Selva, oh Selva_, she thought to herself, tears streaming down her cheeks. She didn't need to touch the body of her lost love to know his body was gone… but she was surprised to find that somehow, there was a little bit of soul left.

"He can't be gone," she whispered to the air around her. "It is too soon." She touched on the wisdom-bond with Olbohn, and spoke to him through it, the returning feather-light touch telling her contact had been made.

_How did he die?_ she asked silently.

Olbohn's response came back, as clear to her as if the Wisdom was standing right there. _Rosiotti. The archer of Lonway._

She could feel herself beginning to weep at that. _You must send him back to me, _she thought. _He has no afterlife, and that is my fault. I cannot allow him to become a ghost. I cannot bear to let him go yet._

_How will you do that?_ Olbohn questioned.

She knew there was only one answer. _I will make him a Wisdom._

A pause, and out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Ricrot looking on questioningly. _I will see to it, _Olbohn replied.

And with that, she felt the last bit of Selva's soul slipping away; but she knew Olbohn would return him soon enough. Anuella straightened, rubbing tears from her eyes, and regarded the gaggle of lilipeas, their eyes all focused on her, waiting.

"You must find me Rosiotti," she told them. They chirped affirmatively, and spread out from the clearing, though she could still point directly to every last one of them. Anuella was left alone with Selva's body, and her lover standing some distance away.

She waited, impatiently, pacing the camp, until finally the news she had been waiting for arrived through that bond. Anuella straightened abruptly, and Ricrot took a step towards her, but she turned from him, and before she knew what was happening, she was herself running into the forest, heading towards the lilipea that had found her goal.

The clearing where she found him was called the Courtyard of Rain, a thick copse of trees which collected moisture to let droplets endlessly slide down to the forest floor below. Underneath those trees, a lanky young man sulked alone, the quiet drip-drops the only sound to accompany his melancholy.

Her dress and cape swished behind her as she approached, and he raised his head to greet her. "Anuella," he said conversationally, almost as if he had expected her. "I must tell you how much I regret killing another great warrior."

Anuella froze, examining the man, and reluctantly decided he was sincere. "Why?" she demanded. "Why do you follow Lonway, then, if you are so opposed to the destruction he creates?"

Rosiotti laughed, a bitter sound. "Rewards were promised. Fame, fortune, a shot at getting part of Mana. But now…" he paused, "now… I know too much of the cost."

"You have achieved wisdom," Anuella told him gently, taking a few steps in his direction. "It is never easy."

He suddenly reached up and grabbed her arms, pulling her uncomfortably close to him. His eyes met hers intently. "Selva was a lucky man," he began, "to have a woman so true to her cause. But it only makes my regrets worse."

She examined him for a long moment, he weighing her in much the same way, until she felt her decision was the right one. "There is something you can do to redeem Selva's memory," she told him, beckoning him to follow her.

He looked skeptical. "Your lilipeas said something like that to me, before you came," he admitted. "They told me to walk the same path as them."

" They are creatures of Mana, and they understand." She led him forward, lifting silver skirts to keep them from dragging on the muddy ground, to the place known as the Spring of the Beasts. From the bodice of her dress, she pulled the medallion, and felt the resonance from the spring beyond. The medallion was something ancient, something of true Mana, and Anuella had been holding onto it for some time, waiting until the time was right to use it.

Rosiotti looked suspiciously at the clear waters of the spring, brow furrowing in concentration. "Why have you brought me here?" he demanded.

She let the suspense of the moment draw out before answering. "To offer you a chance to do something more," she said softly.

He was puzzled. "After I killed your lover?"

She placed one hand on his arm, he flinching in surprise. _Good_, she thought, and leaned in a little closer, her lips very close to his ear. "You fail to see," she practically purred, "what this is really all about." Her other hand was entangled with the cord that had held the medallion around her neck, and she lifted it before his face, swinging it hypnotically.

She felt the Mana within it surge, and Rosiotti could clearly sense it as well, his eyes following its arc almost hungrily. "Become a Wisdom," she whispered to him. "The Wisdom of fire."

"Why fire?" he asked, suspiciously, his eyes never leaving the medallion.

Anuella swept her gaze over the jungle. "Because destruction reigns over here still, and I wish that destruction to end. Fire is both the beginning and the end, just as we are both at the beginning and the end now."

Rosiotti looked intrigued. She had him, she knew. "How?" he asked.

"The air is filled with Mana energy. All you have to do is open your heart and let it flow through you." Anuella smiled a small smile. "That is how you will know life, but you must face death as well," she told him. She had his full attention now. "Fire is one of those chaotic powers," she said, "that only the strong can face. This is how you will prove your strength."

In the distance, she felt the response to her silent, subtle summon. The creature of the spring, the creature born of the power of Pedan itself, was coming.

The beast reared out of the spring with a roar, a lion-headed chimera that was some spawn of the magic of Pedan gone haywire. Wings graced its back, and as it reared, hoofed feet could be seen.

Rosiotti regarded the thing dispassionately. "And how would you have me do that?"

"If you wish to be the lord of the beasts and remain here as the guardian of creatures, you must allow the beast to consume you." Anuella spoke in the lightest of whispers, letting her voice tickle his hearing. "Surrender to it." Her hands ran up his chest, her right hand still holding the rope from which swung the medallion.

She had him bewitched, she knew, and she slipped the medallion over his head with a caressing gesture. She stepped back, and the beast recognized the medallion. Its eyes turned to Rosiotti, glaring angrily at the archer.

For his part, Rosiotti barely glanced at the creature. "I suppose it is my price."

"I will leave you some of the lilipeas, if you agree to guard them," Anuella told him. "The rest I plan to send to a place of safety."

"Will you take your irritating fairies with you?" Rosiotti said, smiling wryly.

Anuella grinned slightly in return. "Those, I have no control over."

Rosiotti only shrugged, and headed forward to the beast that awaited him. THE medallion was the key; it would let the man merge with the form of the beast, and survive once again. She noted the irony that Lady Blackpearl had found it when she herself was seeking to be something more than she had been before.

_As we all are_, she thought with a shudder, watching Rosiotti disappear into the spring. _Selva_, she thought to herself, hoping she had made the right decision.

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Lonway was frustrated, to say the least.

The fairies and their allies were a slippery group. His charismatic younger brother had lured the bulk of the Forsenan forces to his side, leaving him little military strength. His foremost archer Rosiotti had disappeared without a trace. As for his magic powers… he had hoped to use the tower at Mindas to enter the land of the fairies, but Lucemia's destruction of the city twenty years before had severely compromised its power. The mages he led had spells, had instruments, but it was not enough against that witch Anuella.

He was ready to fight dirty.

"You called?" asked Nunuzac, approaching. The summoner was a small, nondescript man of middle age, dressed in the ancient black robes that indicated his study of necromancy, Underworld magics, and all things powerful and dangerous. Part of Anise's legacy, those skills; and Lonway had no qualms about using them.

Lonway did not meet Nunuzac's eyes, looking instead into the distance. "We are at a disadvantage, you realize," he said, reluctantly. "Our magic is strong, but the fairies and their allies are wily. I need something tougher."

Nunuzac contemplated. He was from Old Wendel, and well versed in the ancient magics, both dark and light. "A Wyrm, you wish," he said. "The dragons were the ones who truly had the power. The mages tried to imitate that power by drawing on the strength of the Underworld."

"Is that the power we need?" Lonway inquired. "The rumor was that Drakonis, the ancient Dragon Emperor, taught them himself from the Underworld."

"Perhaps he did, perhaps he didn't. We may never know," Nunuzac replied. "But they got it wrong. The Underworld once had that power, but no longer."

"So you can't do it?" Lonway demanded.

"I never said that," replied Nunuzac smoothly. "Creatures of both light and dark can be summoned, but the principle is the same. It requires a connection to the _otherworld_, to the other dimensions, to enter the void that separates them and come back again. It is a point in time rather than space; the Underworld was once the home for that power, but it is merely a location. The power is its own, and it is dangerous and difficult to control."

Lonway didn't understand it all, but if Nunuzac could do it, that was good enough for him. "So _are_ you strong enough?" he demanded.

"Naturally," Nunuzac replied evenly. "Merely advising you of the risks, my Lord."

That settled the matter, as far as the Emperor was concerned, but Lonway was troubled about other things as well. "What do you think of Lasdanac returning to his homeland of Gato?" he asked. "Why would he betray us?"

"He has not betrayed us, only abandoned," Nunuzac replied. "But the reason is obvious. He must have fallen under some sort of fairies' curse. His great-grandfather Olbohn was one of our greatest allies, and I can think of no other explanation for why he would leave now."

"I suppose," Lonway pondered. "Goddess-damned fairies. So, what Wyrm will you conjure up for us?"

Nunuzac closed his eyes in a long minute of meditation, and when he reopened them, it was with a gleeful smile. "The Wyrm of Fire," he said. "Freymold is its name."

"I don't give a crap what its name is, as long as it can destroy the fairies," Lonway said. "And my brother, and that witch Anuella."

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Truthfully, Nunuzac was not as confident as he had sounded; he was gambling on the strength of his abilities to reach across the void, the powers of the moon. He had always had an affinity for the more chaotic and misunderstood elements – moon, dark, fire.

If only he had the core of a Jumi… the cores, freed from the bodies which hosted them, had tremendous power. But the Jumi seemed to have disappeared into the rocks which had spawned them.

Emperor Lonway regarded him with impatience, and Nunuzac returned his mind to the task at hand.

The first step was to clear it, to empty it of thoughts. This was the same way one touched on Mana; but now, it was not the power of Mana he was seeking.

This was… something else. The opposite of Mana, if such a thing could be said to exist. Dangerously explosive when brought into contact with proper Mana, if not properly contained, something few could do.

But he was not just anyone.

The contact resisted his efforts at first, pushing back, but he did not force it, merely remaining as he was, neither giving in nor fighting. There was a fine line between the point where one surrendered to merge with the other dimension, and the point where that other dimension consumed one whole.

The feeling of resistance faded, but Nunuzac did not press forward, letting his powers roll forward on their own. At every small step, resistance, pressure, was felt once again; but each time, it faded and slipped away, until finally, the full contact was made. Nunuzac's mind was now encased in that alternate existence, and some incomprehensible distance away, his corporeal body smiled.

He called, and he heard the answer. The Wyrm whose energy he had touched raced towards him, _through_ him, using him as a conduit for its escape. Nunuzac clung to that raging force, allowing the Wyrm to spiral through his very soul to the dimension of the humans.

Despite his grip, part of Nunuzac's soul was pulled along with Freymold, back to the world in which he began, yet still linked to the beyond. Ordinary vision returned, and Nunuzac noted distantly the enormous beast hovering in the air above Mindas, greedily attracted by the power of that ancient city. Flames flickered off its body as Nunuzac struggled to hold on to his summoning.

The fires feeding off Freymold licked the air, heat radiating all around them, and the Wyrm shrieked, struggling to escape its bonds. Nunuzac held on for all his worth, but the creature dove with snapping jaws, grabbing at the unseen Mana quivering around them.

And suddenly, it… snatched… some of that power. How, Nunuzac never knew, but Freymold hurled its bundle of captured Mana back at its enslaver, sending it tearing along the bond, the implosion of Mana and anti-Mana ripping apart the connection to free the Wyrm. It screamed with an ear-piercing frequency, and dove for the two men who had brought it into this world.

Freymold's fiery breath incinerated Lonway immediately, but before Nunuzac could protect himself, he felt the backlash of the reaction spring back into his soul. He was thrown backwards along the bond, back towards the void from which he had called the creature, and he felt himself falling…

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Rosiotti looked up from where he had been reclining on his forest throne, his bestial head leaning on his paws. His new form surprised him still, but he had found it… surprisingly easy to accommodate.

It had, indeed, heightened his sense of Mana, and the disturbance he felt now was like nothing he had sensed before.

The lilipeas around him squealed in agitation, their sensitivity even more exquisite than his own. His head snapped up, just in time to see the sky darken, only to be filled with the light of fire once again.

_Nunuzac_, he thought. _That damn Lonway is using his powers at last_.

The Wyrm circled above, captivated by the Mana that permeated the forest. _His_ forest, the forest that was his responsibility, as were the creatures in it. He motioned the lilipeas to scatter, and obediently, they tore in all directions.

He waited until he felt they were at a safe distance, and then Rosiotti reared up, and roared.

The Wyrm paused in midair as the sound echoed through the forest, turning its enormous head to regard the creature that dared defy him. It opened its gaping maw, spewing fire before it.

The trees torched instantly; there was nothing that could be done for that, as Freymold rained destruction on the forest. Rosiotti himself was protected in his current form, and stood there, unharmed, the enormous creature looking… perplexed, if such a thing was possible.

"Destroy my forest, will you?" the Wisdom roared. "Fire is _my_ element now! Let's see what power you have against Mana!"

Rosiotti tore through the jungle with his loping lion's strides, hearing the Wyrm shriek as it raced to follow him. Silently, he sent a thought to the beasts of the forest to flee, and he felt them obey, running from the path he was carving out. He crashed through the trees only moments before Freymold turned them into burnt remnants, heading towards his destination single-mindedly.

Before him, he could see the trees opening up, and beyond, the Spring of the Beasts. The spring where his new life had been born. The pool of water had once been the center of the city of Pedan, and he felt the power as he approached, increasingly exponentially with every stride.

The Wyrm was closing in on him now, and Rosiotti splashed into the water without hesitation.

The warm water surrounded him, but wrapped in with it was the warmer feeling of Mana, surrounding him like the softest of blankets. He swam out to the center, paddling with his four paws, to the point where the feeling became so intense, so painfully sweet, that he could hardly bear it.

Freymold paused at the edge of the spring, the Mana repelling it, the Wyrm crying out in frustration. Its serpentine body traveled over the burnt wreckage it had created, circling the lake but unable to advance.

"That's right," Rosiotti shouted, poking his sodden mane from the water. "You will come no further! Find yourself another target!"

Whether it understood or not, the Wyrm spiraled upwards into midair, and Rosiotti gave a silent thanks to Anuella for the gifts she had granted him. Freymold stretched out its gargantuan body once again, and flew off to the northwest. Towards Gato.

----------------------------------------

Selva was safe. He had gone on to his new life as the Wisdom of Wind, and that, at least, calmed Anuella.

But plenty of suffering remained, ghosts of the past and present haunting her still. Cries of fear, cries of pain, penetrated her dreams every night. Anuella tossed in her room at the Temple of Gato, waking hazily to realize some of those cries were real, pulling her out of her bed in the Temple of Gato.

"What is it?" Ricrot called behind her, sleepily, but her attention was already elsewhere.

The early morning light greeted her as she stumbled out to the windy terraces of the Holy City, but off in the distance was a different sort of light. The panicked citizenry perhaps did not know what it was, but she did, all too well.

"The Wyrm," she gasped. "They really did…" She could feel its power even at this great distance. It was nothing like Geimaswald, a creature nothing more than a nuisance, it only partly drawn into this world. Freymold was fully here, with all the power of the otherworld inside it.

A movement caught her eye, and she turned to see Lasdanac Liotte emerging from the temple, one arm wrapped around its young priestess, both in a state of rather suggestive undress. Amalette Holloway had been the reason she had come to Gato, to lend her support to the young woman descended from Carlie herself, the first to take over the Temple of Healing since Carlie's death only a handful of years before. _The Goddess' s blessing that Carlie did not live to see_ this, thought Anuella randomly. The influence of the line was strong, however, and Anuella intended it to stay that way.

Lasdanac had been her childhood sweetheart, and was now her adult lover. He had abandoned the forces of the mages to return home to help her. Together, they would lead Gato into a new age.

If they all survived this day.

Ricrot appeared beside her, one arm wrapped around her in a mirror image of the other couple, but Anuella could only shiver in anticipation as the Wyrm bore down on the city full force. The nekos of Gato, the family that was Amalette's personal protectors, surrounded her, but there was little they could do to protect their liege woman from this monstrosity.

"It's… it's too strong," Anuella cried, anguished. "I cannot do anything that would hurt this one."

Lasdanac placed one hand on her shoulder, startling her. "Let me," he told her confidently.

"What can you do?" she asked, trying not to let the doubt creep in her voice.

"I returned home to become one of the warrior monks," he told her, smiling gently. "This will be the home of the Goddess. If She can give us any power, she will do so now."

Anuella had her doubts, but she watched in fascination as Lasdanac stepped forward, building the spell. It was a spell of pure Mana, a spell of more power than she had ever been able to create herself. A spell of truth.

She turned to see Amalette, her gazed entrained on her lover, a tall slender thing with curling auburn hair that blew in the winds. One hand lay protectively on her belly, and suddenly all was clear. _That's it_, Anuella thought. _He has love to draw on, love and life yet to be, the purest form of Mana._ She wished she had even once truly experienced the emotion.

Freymold swept over the city, neglecting the buildings to focus on the insect daring to confront it. It filled the sky above them as it glared down at Lasdanac, who stood his ground without a hint of fear.

Its fiery jaws opened, and the Wyrm spewed a wave of scorching breath, and in the same instant, Lasdanac released the Mana he had built. Invisible, but the results were not. Anuella felt the collision, the enormous volume of the power of the Goddess colliding with the demon spawn, Mana whipping its tendrils around the creature. Freymold screamed as motes of light appeared all over its body, boring holes into the creature's shell, _dissolving_ it before their very eyes.

Pieces of the Wyrm fell way, enormous chunks hurtling toward the ground below, and Ricrot instinctively wrapped his arms around Anuella, pulling her down to the ground. She could have told him there was no need; the remnants splintered and disappeared before ever nearing them, motes of reddish light the last visible sign of the creature's existence.

How long they had stood there, she could not say, but the sun was well over the horizon when she stood, the skies over Gato clear and empty once again.

"That was the end," she said, quietly. "They will not be able to recover from this." Impulsively, she fell to her knees before the man. "I defer to you, sir."

He reached down, pulling her to back to her feet. Ricrot only stroked his beard thoughtfully, his expression a bit… calculating. "I could use a man like you on my side. How did you do that?"

"The fairies," Lasdanac replied. "The fairies who guard Gato taught me."

Amalette stepped in. "The fairies helped him perfect it, but he's always been able to do that. I myself, I can link to the Goddess, like my great-grandmother, but I don't the powers he does." She raised her eyes to his adoringly. "I am hoping our daughter will inherit that power as well."

"We don't know - " Lasdanac began, but she interrupted. "_I_ do. Twins, a boy and a girl. He will have your name and become a knight. She will have mine and follow me as the priestess of Gato."

Anuella studied the two, and hoped.

----------------------------------------

The end had been a bitter victory.

Anuella had watched as the mages were brutally pushed back, not so much from their lack of power – they had plenty of dark power, she knew – but from their inability to consolidate it, to control it. It had been their undoing, just as for her mother.

The fairies had won, in a way, and for a while Mana was understood and used in its pure form once again. But after all the wars, the fairies hated humans, the humans hated fairies, and though the fairies had fought to protect the Goddess, they themselves were no closer to Her than before.

Ricrot had accepted the mages' surrender with Anuella at his side. The ceremony took place at the University of Pedan, the repository of knowledge of Mana that was now housed in a desert oasis where it had moved early in the wars.

Ricrot had gracefully accepted the mages back into the fold, and he was crowned Emperor. The first ruler of Forsena formally known as Emperor, not King, and Anuella couldn't help but wonder where that might lead.

Over a hundred years of wars had ensued since her mother had sought the Tree, and now she wondered who, in fact, had really won. Perhaps it had been Anise after all. She had thought for so long her side was right, but now it seemed that no matter the side one chose, humankind had become afraid to desire, to hope, to dream, wary of might come of it, that it may all turn to ashes in the end, like Mana itself. Perhaps the only true peace of one's soul was not to desire anything.

But they would do their part to preserve what could be saved, she and Ricrot. They had founded the city of Geo around the ancient University, a city devoted to magic. Perhaps it would help replace some of what had been destroyed.

It had been ten years since the wars had ended, ten years in which they had built the city up, developing the new Academy of Magic from the smaller university that preceded it. Slowly, scholars came, united by their common desire to preserve Mana, to ensure the world never had to experience the Mana wars again.

She entered the marble and sandstone hallways that were to be the new academy of magic, and drew her breath. There, in the center, was a sand rose, a duplicate of a rose supposed to be in the Sanctuary of Mana itself, but sculpted from the desert sands and crystallized by magic. A gift from Ricrot to her.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Nunuzac's voice came from behind her.

She wheeled, to see the pane of glass that was now Nunuzac's only communication with the dimension of the mortals. He was a danger no longer, but his knowledge was vast, and Ricrot saw the wisdom of allowing him to join the Academy of Geo.

"It has power…" Nunuzac floated, the floating glass wiggling towards the rose Anuella was adoring. "Like Jumi cores."

Anuella felt a chill at that. "Cores?"

"Concentrated power," he responded.

Anuella grew wary. "You're not looking for Jumi cores, are you?" Nunuzac's glass pane could not show expression, of course, but before he could respond, Ricrot strode in, clad in full regalia.

"Anuella," he greeted her warmly. "You are just in time to see the other surprise I have for you." The young king pulled back a cloth that covered an enormous painting mounted on the wall.

It was of her mother.

"What are you thinking, Ricrot?" Anuella gasped. She felt a chill, and grasped the railing at her side to steady herself. _Her ghost will always follow me_, she thought to herself, as if the painting itself could somehow summon Anise's spirit.

"Your mother was a great mage. She should be revered. Without her, magic would not be where it is today," Ricrot announced with a hint of admiration.

"She destroyed half the world," Anuella intoned breathlessly, staring at the enormous visage of Anise above her. "I've spent my whole life fighting against what she started." Ricrot seemed not to hear, gazing around at the main hall of the academy he had created, an academy to nurture the mages who had once tried to destroy everything the Goddess had wanted.

Her heart sank, as she realized something she had been trying to hide from herself all this time. Ricrot was… not on her side. He was on the side of _himself,_ and whatever was most beneficial to him and the empire he craved. She had been a part of that, for a while… but that was all she was.

She didn't think she would ever be able to look at him the same way again.

Time passed, and Anuella found herself unwilling to resist, unable to leave, the motivation that had once driven her now drained away into near-indifference. Her worst fears were proven right as Ricrot's city of Geo began to take form. It was a city of magic, not the Goddess.

The male monks of Gato were forced to come to the new city to become mages, and it was only the efforts of Amalette that kept the female nuns from the same fate. The priestess saw the influence of her prestigious family diminishing, having little influence outside of Gato itself. Her daughter remained with her to grow up in Gato, and her son Julio came with his father to Geo, the father taking up service with the emperor, the son training to follow in his father's footsteps.

Nunuzac avoided her studiously once rumors appeared of Jumi cores for sale in the city. Anuella investigated, but was never able to pin the rumors down, and she hoped fervently that the gossip was just that.

She rarely saw Ricrot. It had been years since she had harbored any sort of feelings for him. Eventually, she began glimpsing him in dark corners with a young woman, a pretty, vapid, sort of thing, a hint of jealousy surfaced beside herself. She studied herself in the mirror; despite her lengthened life, the marks of age were creeping in, decades later than they might have otherwise, but there they were, worry and care taking their toll.

Ricrot became ever more fanatical, claiming to know the will of the Goddess herself, insisting that he was the one who spoke Her words. _The Goddess was not to be fully known, _thought Anuella_, only gently understood and loved by all_. He built churches to his beliefs, creating his own books of divine guidance, and soon only Gato stood to truly represent the old religion. Anuella wanted to cry, to tear out her hair.

The final straw came with the reports that Ricrot was brutally slaughtering the fairies, as well as the survivors of Lonway, and Anuella knew that it was time to confront him.

Out the window, she saw Lasdanac Liotte, training the knights beneath him in the yard. His role was to train the next generation in ancient Forcena's code of chivalry, to create a new group of holy knights, and Anuella couldn't help but note the element of hypocrisy, as Ricrot sowed destruction all around.

Remembering how Lasdanac had once confronted the Wyrm with the powers of truth, Anuella found strength within herself as she strode towards Ricrot's throne room with a determination she had not felt in years. She threw the doors open with a gratifying slam, and marched purposefully towards the man she once thought she loved.

The emperor was only meeting with a couple of his advisors, and looking up, sensing her mood, he dismissed them with a wave of his hand. Anuella froze, suddenly unsure what she wanted to say.

The two looked at each other for a long time. Once lovers, now strangers.

"What are you doing?" she finally asked him softly. He understood her meaning, stepping down from the dais to look at her face-to-face.

"Making the future," he told her calmly. _Like every Forcenan, choosing practically, she thought to herself._ "Look around, Anuella. I named Geo for the Jumi, as you know, to find that level of power, since they are gone…"

"Except for their cores for sale in the city?" she challenged him.

His face hardened. "I wouldn't know about that."

"Well, you should," Anuella said harshly, the words suddenly coming out in a torrent. "You should know everything that is going on, every reason why. The Jumi were meant for love, for the Goddess, not for the power you jealously crave. How do you justify training knights to kill, but calling them 'holy'? What is the meaning of your fervent campaign against 'heretics'? How do you suppose you are the religious leader, while forgetting everything that matters? Have you forgotten everything we fought for? _Have you forgotten the Goddess?_"

He _had_, she realized, watching the expression on his face. He cared for nothing other than his own beliefs, his own ambitions, and nothing she could say would change that.

Anuella wondered how long it would be before he discredited her own memory.

He advanced towards her, and she found herself shrinking back in repulsion, her skin crawling as he wrapped his arms around her.

"The ultimate power, Anuella," he whispered. "The ultimate weapon. Power to eclipse the Goddess herself. What more could we want?"

She felt suddenly chilled, caressed with ghostly fingers that had not bothered her for nearly a century, but there they were, her mother's touch, her mother's logic, her mother's words…

Anuella tore herself from his grasp, wondering if she was in the grip of madness. A voice called after her, but it was distant, outside her; all she could think of was her fear, her pain, her hate. The desperate need to flee controlled her and she _ran_, knowing not what she was going towards, only what she was running from.

----------------------------------------

Vadise fondled the green cane delicately, and the lilipeas chirped around her.

It was the gift Anuella had promised her so long ago. The artifact drew Mana from the earth, and her forest blossomed once again, to guard the Tree Stone, still peacefully growing. The lilipeas had brought it to her, chirping with agitation at the fate of their mistress, and the dragon had taken the creatures under her wing. So to speak.

She looked at the newly-vibrant forest around her. "It is all for Anuella's memory," she whispered.

Jajara did not hear her. "Why have you summoned me here, Vadise?" inquired the other dragon, looking ever the worse for wear. Grayish, sunken skin now bore holes in places, showing white bone underneath, in places bloodied by tendons still attached.

"To give you news. Anuella will not continue as wisdom past her death," Vadise told him, and Jajara started.

"She will give up so easily?" the bone dragon asked. "Death is not such a great barrier."

"It is not so simple," she replied. "Selva was one matter, but she is beyond what Olbohn, or even you, can save. She has extended her life too long, and Mana will give her nothing more." Vadise lowered her head sadly. "We will have only the ghost of her memory."

Jajara snorted, dead air spurting from bony nostrils, he himself only a ghost of what he once had been. "It was the Empire that crushed her spirit," he said. "They overstep themselves, and break those things which must be preserved. They are the nemesis of ourselves, and the Goddess," he finished defiantly.

----------------------------------------

The place felt like home.

Granted, it was nothing but a junkyard, but it was a trash dump full of her own creations – things she had crafted from Mana for Ricrot, for the faeries, for the dragons; things she had made herself, things she had taught others to make, inspired others to make.

She wandered the wreckage, feeling the spell solidify behind her. Its faint residue followed her; she knew what she meant to do by it. The spell would lock her in, and keep others out, until she was finally released from life.

The artifacts, the dolls, the instruments… the _things_… seemed to whisper to her, knowing her as one of their own. She was just as much a _thing_ as any of it, and their whispered accusations trickled to her ear as she traversed the abandoned plain, itself as much a ruin as her ancient country of Altena had been.

Their anger pressed on her guilt, and she indulged those feelings of pain, of shame. Her arms crossed in front of her, she dug her fingernails into her flesh until blood dropped onto the snow beneath her feet. But the words stung her in a way that transcended the merely physical. Deep down, she knew her sanity was by now questionable; but really, had she ever hoped for better? She knew she would finish her miserable life here.

Anuella neither ate nor drank, never slept, only walked, until finally her strength gave out. Exhausted, she tumbled to the ground, her legs refusing to carry her further, and she curled up into a ball, memories and imagination blending into a delusional tableau.

She lost track of how long she lay there, only knowing it had been some time when she felt a disruption to the Mana in the air, and a presence that spoke of familiarity. She opened her eyes and lifted her head weakly, to find one of the discarded dolls gliding towards her. A doll she remembered all too well, a doll with eyes that burned red with ungoddessly power.

"Wisdom," Magnolia cackled. "So you find yourself with us here, now, after all this time."

Anuella instinctively reached to push the thing away, but it advanced inexorably. It drew near to look at her with its scorching eyes. "No," she cried in fear. "No, you are not mine, those eyes are my mother's. You are my nemesis!"

"No," the doll scolded. "_You_ are the one that wanted to create me. You are the one who _wanted_, who _desired_, who led us all to destruction. You are the _Artificer_."

"I only wanted…" Anuella pleaded, unsure what it was she wanted.

"You don't know?" Magnolia asked. "Then, what was it all for?"

Anuella did not know, and maybe she never had. She curled up into the fetal position once again, her breaths heavy and labored. Her lost guilt rushed back to her, enveloping her as easily as it constricted her, the ghosts of past, present, and possibly future coming to haunt her.

The doll's eyes flared as she floated closer.


	36. Legends: Nemesis

**36: Legends: Nemesis**

The giant dragon skull rested on the ground in the peace of ancient death.

Not Akravator's skull. Escad had seen what happened to the dragon's corpse, it disappearing, the only remains being the bone he had already hacked away; one of those Mana things, he thought, but it didn't really matter to him. Though he was grateful that the bodies of the Windcallers had disappeared as well, for Ariesa's sake; she had seemed glad to not have seen their corpses on the trip back down the mountain.

A quick warp spell once they were out of the range of the mountain's Mana, and here they were. This dragon skeleton was… something else. The skull itself was as big as a house, and the skeleton… led into a fortress beyond, a fortress Jajara called home. "Even the foliage houses Mana, and Jajara hoards it for his own plans," griped Larc.

Escad wondered about the ancient dragon whose bones lay before him. Or was it a Wyrm, what was the difference again? Was it like Lucemia? A force that promoted destruction so avidly, it ended up destroyed itself?

No matter. The thing was dead now, and their job was to get inside. Escad joined Larc's side to peer at it more closely, no obvious entry presenting itself. Larc grunted. "It's a dragon. Dead or not, it should have the manners to obey a dragoon." He kicked the skull irritably. "One way or another, we'll get inside."

"I cannot allow that," said a voice, dry as dust.

Escad turned to see… what could only be called a slit in reality. The air itself seemed to tear, revealing an odd darkness beyond, and from that void stepped a skeletal soldier.

_The Empire recycles now_, he thought sarcastically. He had fought the empire in his youth, but those were just regular soldiers, garden-variety grunts. By the uniform, this was… one of Deathbringer's elite lot, trash brought back from the dead.

He motioned hastily to Ariesa, who slipped neatly into position on the ghost's other side, her slender, lightweight sword already braced for action as he reached to heft his heavier two-handed blade.

Larc scored the first clean hit, his heavy axe smashing into that night-black armor, leaving a sizable dent. It flinched, but showed no visible signs of pain. The dragoon drove it forward towards Escad, his weapon inflicting brutal damage on the otherworldly suit of armor.

Grimly, Escad braced himself, and smashed his own weapon into the soldier's back, sending the armor crashing to the ground with a clatter. Its metal arms struggled to right itself, but Ariesa dove in, neatly severing the links between the pieces, revealing… nothing… inside.

Escad shuddered, but pushed the feeling away as he brought his sword downward with tremendous force, metal ringing off metal as his weapon broke the thing apart to send pieces flying in all directions. Eerily, disembodied metallic limbs twitched slightly, until all the pieces disappeared as one, vaporizing into a black smoke that the wind quickly carried away.

The stone jaw of the dragon head dropped to the ground, shaking the earth with the impact, and revealing a hallway beyond. Escad was the first to step inside that bony jaw, blood running and eager for more action, tearing towards the dimly lit rooms beyond as he heard Larc and Ariesa following more slowly behind him.

"I smell a trap!" growled Larc, running to catch up to Escad.

"Escad!" Ariesa called in concern, and he turned to catch the barest glimpse of her, before he felt the ground shudder beneath him.

_Daena always told me I was the impulsive one_, he thought to himself randomly, as he crashed through the floor to the depths below.

----------------------------------------

They were well and truly lost. Elazul had been absolutely certain that he knew which way to go, but suddenly it felt like the trail had _jumped_, in a completely different direction. He was trying to make his best guess as to where they should be going now, but he had the feeling he wasn't fooling anyone.

Where they had ended up, was certainly not where they had been trying to go. The "Graveyard of Artifacts", it was officially called, but really, it was just a heap of junk. Elazul puzzled over the mound of trash that was all that remained by which to honor Anuella.

The woman had been near insane near her death, everyone knew that. Then again, after all she had been through, it was perhaps not surprising.

She had been one of the critical figures of history, and Elazul couldn't help but feel that it was like being inside her head, looking at the miscellaneous remnants of her creations and contemplating the broken items surrounding him. Lisa and Bud, with that natural curiosity that all had at that age, poked among the wreckage.

"What brings you here?" boomed a voice suddenly. Lisa and Pearl emitted very similar squeaks in surprise, and Daena's hand flashed to her flail.

The creature that lumbered towards them was sort of… demi-human. It walked towards them on two feet, wearing an odd pair of pants, but its chest was grossly exaggerated, covered with some grayish fur, ending in a head that might have passed for something more human had it not been for the lack of neck.

"I am Fernando, and I demand an answer," he continued. Elazul relaxed slightly, hoping Fernando – what an odd name for a monster – wouldn't be offended by whichever female he heard giggling behind him.

"We're lost," Elazul finally admitted, ignoring Daena's smirk.

"Oh, is that all?" Fernando replied, the harsh, guttural voice settling into an ordinary and positively cordial one. "I can lead you out. Follow me. I wouldn't recommend touching anything, though. The things here do not like to be disturbed."

A quick chide from Daena pulled the children closer, and Pearl walked beside him, absolutely silent, the look on her face telling him that she was quite lost in her thoughts, but told him nothing about how or why. She ran her gaze over the rotting bits of garbage around them, residues of Mana still there for them both, but the true power gone now that the structure of the things had fallen apart.

They came to an odd open area, and Fernando paused. "Wait here. I have to make the path appear," he said, then suddenly ran off, leaving the puzzled group to look around uncertainly.

Elazul sat on a dried-out tree stump, figuring that at least was safe, and put his head in one hand glumly. Pearl joined him, still not saying anything, but placing one small hand on his shoulder. He closed his eyes, and rested his head on that hand wearily.

"Hey, guys, look at this!" came Bud's voice.

"Bud, no!" came Lisa's shout as Elazul jumped up, but it was too late. Whatever item Bud had been tugging on came loose, and an entire pile of objects avalanched after it, crashing to the ground, some breaking even more than they were already broken.

Bud looked at the mess, abashed. "Oops," was all he said.

"Who dares to disturb our rest?" hissed a demonic voice.

Over the wreckage came floating a small figure, barely larger than a fairy and looking something the same, like a doll version of one, but with glaring red eyes. "I am Magnolia, and this is my domain. What are you doing here?" she demanded in that same raspy voice.

Daena opened her mouth to say something, but Magnolia interrupted her. "No," she uttered. "I want to talk to _that_ one." She pointed at Elazul, who balked slightly, but stepped forward at the doll's summon.

"Why did she come here?" Magnolia asked.

"Who? Pearl?" Elazul asked, now thoroughly confused.

"No. The Artificer. _Anuella_," she finished, pronouncing the name almost like a curse word, then laughing maniacally. "I destroyed her here, you see? Just like I destroyed the girl I was given to. Destroy, destroy, destroy…" she finished in a sing-song voice, slightly off-key.

"I have no idea," said Elazul, hand reaching for his sword stealthily.

"_Liar_!" Magnolia shouted, suddenly diving for him. Elazul's sword was raised in a flash, and Magnolia thought better of it and stopped, backtracking a small distance away. "You knew her, you did. I see her mark on you."

There was a brush against his cape, and he realized Pearl had stepped behind him; her core told him she was completely freaked out. "Eyes of Flame," she whispered suddenly, inexplicably.

Well, those eyes sure did _look_ like flames. Their burning redness made Elazul profoundly uncomfortable, but he couldn't afford to be truly afraid. "It's fine, Pearl," he said soothingly, and she seemed to relax.

"You _knew_ her," insisted Magnolia.

"Sorry to disappoint you," Elazul said, as casually as he could muster, "but Anuella has been dead for hundreds of years."

Magnolia looked, of all things, _confused_ by that. "Centuries? Truly? Has it been so long we have been trapped here?" Elazul nodded, and she seemed to deflate. "You should not be here, in the past. Very well, then. I will lead you through."

"But Fernando - " protested Daena.

"Shush," Magnolia admonished. "The creature is stupid and knows little. Come this way. It is the only way, but the things here will be out to get you if you don't know where you are going."

Magnolia flitted a short distance away, leading them down a path where the heaps were so tall that they cast shadows over the path. Elazul faked confidence for the sake of the others, but truthfully, he found himself hoping this was indeed the way out.

The twins did not need to be told this time to stick together, they walking side by side, unintentional mirrors of one another as Bud looked left and Lisa looked right, both fascinated and terrified. Pearl's spacey expression was replaced by alertness, and Daena had not let her guard down once since they had entered the place.

Magnolia seemed to bring life to the objects as she passed. Murmurs seemed to come to their ears, from where, exactly, they could not say. Voices told of pain, of desperation, of death. Stories of fighting for, against the fairies, the mages. Memories of the war where Mana had become a weapon, and Elazul felt sudden pity for those who had endured such a corruption.

He was not the only one who sensed it. "All this angst, all these memories, all this pain," Daena mused. "What was it all for?"

"You know it all means something different to me, right?" Elazul replied. Pearl nodded vigorously in understanding.

"What do you mean?" she asked him, puzzled.

Elazul sighed. Sappho had seen to it he knew his Jumi history, but it never failed to make him angry. "The Jumi did not take sides in the war. They brought the powers of healing to both sides, but people were more interested in finding out if Jumi could be used to gather more power. Eventually, they no longer cared if the person was attached to the core, and that's when the hunting began."

"Oh," Daena said, looking suddenly embarrassed. "I forgot. I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Elazul brushed off, distracted by the pain that had begun to form in his core. He could only assume it had come on when he got himself so worked up; it was nothing like the sharp, wrenching pain that had brought him to his knees earlier.

Pearl grabbed his hand. He tried to keep it from her, but the bond let her know, of course. The bond was another thing that was worrying him; ever since his core had been injured, it was… less. Still there, but not the same, and he experienced it as a loss.

"The wars didn't really help anyone in the end, did they?" Daena said.

"No," Elazul agreed, looking forward at their poltergeist guide. She seemed to feel him, and turned to address Elazul once again.

"I saw _her_, you know," Magnolia told them. "After the wars. Our creator. She gave us life, but our life was only death. It wasn't her fault, none of it was, really but I hate her for it all!" She hissed, a high, whistling sound. "She was able to die. We cannot die. I am haunted by the Underworld, filled with its power, but unable to go there."

Pearl reached one hand forward, sympathy welling in those blue-gray eyes. "Nothing lasts forever," she said gently. "The Goddess will be back someday."

"They told us that, too. But… I think perhaps you are not so twisted as they once were," mused the doll. "I only wish… that I was free, the same as everyone does. They say that those who die with desire in their hearts will wander the earth forever, but what if all you want is revenge?"

Magnolia made an abrupt turn, revealing a passage Elazul had missed completely. A forest was visible, and the Norn Peaks, their original destination, beyond. "You go this way, now."

"But - " Elazul protested, feeling the pull of Ariesa in the opposite direction.

"You go _this_ way," Magnolia insisted. "That was where you were heading. You should remain true to your goal. It might not be what you think you need, but you will find it soon enough." Elazul looked doubtfully at the path before them, but when he looked back, Magnolia had disappeared.

----------------------------------------

Ariesa woke staring at the ceiling. _How many times could one reasonably be expected to be knocked unconscious_, she wondered. The thought slowly brought her back, and the reality of the situation returned.

"Escad?" she called. "Larc?" There was no answer from either.

How long had she been out? The last thing she remembered was the floor caving in under Escad, taking her down with it. She didn't think they would have left her - definitely not Escad, and oddly, she thought Larc neither - which left only one possibility.

They had been taken.

And that meant she was not alone.

Panic welled briefly, but she was practiced in ignoring it. It would go down soon enough, if she replaced it with rational thought. So she took a deep breath, and composed herself to the surroundings.

Bones formed the arches and supports of the room she was in, and rooms and hallways were vaguely visible beyond. Where to go first? "This way," she told herself, and set out with no further thought.

She had guessed wrong, she realized soon enough, as the corridor dead-ended in a mock graveyard of miscellaneous bones and some skull of an animal she did not recognize. The bones didn't even bother her anymore, as she took a seat on the skull to ponder her dilemma.

"Hey! Watch it!"

Ariesa jumped straight up, looking around in confusion, but the room was as empty as when she entered. The only other possibility... "Did you just talk to me?" she addressed the skull, thinking she was losing it completely.

The skull's eyes lit up, and the response reassured her… briefly, before she realized it was a _skull_ talking back.

"Now, what's a pretty girl like you doing lost in a place like this?" the skull continued.

"You can _see_? You think I'm pretty?" was her gut response. Possibly she was running short on compliments, if she enjoyed receiving one from what was essentially an inanimate object.

The skull laughed, the eye-lights flickering. "Well, I can hear you're female, and after all this time, can you blame me for hoping an attractive woman would show up?"

"Oh." Ariesa couldn't think of a response.

"Well, seriously," the skull continued. "I remember what it is like to think the fortress has me trapped. The bone dragon made it that way, a prison for those unfortunate enough to step inside. But I can help you, now. I've had plenty of time to figure this castle out."

"Okay, would you tell me, please?" Ariesa knelt to make eye contact, such as it was. She could at least be polite to a spirit who called her pretty.

"First, push on that wall over there," the skull instructed. "You'll find a new passage. But don't try to leave without the rest of your party, or they'll be stuck here forever."

"Thank you," Ariesa replied. Stepping towards the wall, she paused to turn. "One more question. Is there a Mana Stone here?"

The skull paused before answering. "There is," it replied, "but you'd be lucky to live to see it. I sure didn't." And it laughed again, a brittle, rattling sound that gave her chills down her spine.

That was enough. She pushed on the wall as told, and the bones clattered to the floor, revealing the opening beyond.

A man paced in the shadows of the room beyond, strangely familiar, but too short to be Larc or Escad. It suddenly dawned on her. "_Thoma_?" she said incredulously.

The young man started, then pulled off his helm to reveal the same face she had seen in Polpota, but now somehow looking a little older and much more haunted. "He brought me here," Thoma said, "to find out what I had discovered. But he wasn't happy that the core had escaped him. He left me down here and said he'd deal with me later… I've been here ever since…" His eyes wandered, as if they had not needed to focus for a long time.

"Who?" asked Ariesa. "Who would do such a thing?"

"The Emperor. _Deathbringer_," he finished, whispering the name as if he expected someone to hear.

Anger welled within her, fury at the Empire rising once again. "You can't stay here," she said.

"But… where do I go? How do I get out of here?" Thoma asked, slightly confused and disoriented.

"Come with me," she told him commandingly. He started slightly, clarity seeming to return to his expression. The slightest light of hope was seen, and he nodded, as she turned to go.

----------------------------------------

Escad allowed Ariesa to help him up grudgingly. He was embarrassed about falling for such a trap, and he knew he shouldn't take it out on her, but he brushed off her concern curtly nevertheless. "I'm _fine_," he protested, as she offered her hand to support him.

But his composure dropped, and he practically _jumped_, startled, when he saw the other figure with her, and the armor he was wearing. "Why do you have a soldier of the _Empire_ with you?" he demanded.

Thoma opened his mouth to defend himself, but Ariesa waved him off. "I know him, Escad," she said determinedly, "and I say he goes with us." Escad still was wary of the man, but he had never heard her take that tone with him before, and it was a tone that deflected all argument.

Perhaps she had a little spine to her after all.

"The Empire seeks only to restore Mana to the world," Thoma said, puffing up, reminding Escad of the young man he himself had once been. Unable to admit he was wrong.

"That's what you imagine will happen," Escad berated him. "Your illusions will be destroyed soon enough."

Once, he had allowed himself to imagine only ideals. Now, he knew better. _Imagination could be dark as well_, he thought to himself. And perhaps sometimes it should be. That was one of those things the Underworld had taught him, that both dark and light in balance made the world of the Goddess. And those poor fools who only expected the best…

"We should go," he said brusquely, in Ariesa's general direction. She was too preoccupied to notice, staring at the walls in contemplation. "What?" he asked.

"Go _where_? In this castle?" she replied. Hastily she briefed him on her experiences in the basement. Talking skulls and secret passages… Escad whistled. Jajara didn't mess around.

"The only question is," she finished, "how do we get back up?"

"Elevator," he replied simply. She followed his arm to a bone-blocked gate that he had seen just as the floor crashed in on him.

He walked over, pulling on the bone with all his might, stopping to splinter it sporadically with his sword until, eventually the thick bone cracked. _This would have been a great time for Larc to be here with that axe of his_, thought Escad sarcastically, moving to the next one.

Ariesa got the picture quickly enough, and she started in on the other side, helping hack through the barrier until they cleared a space large enough to squeeze through to the room beyond. Wisps of flame greeted them, flitting through the air above. "Where to? Where to?" they seemed to cry, the voices high and shrieking but reminiscent of those incredibly irritating Shadoles nonetheless.

"Where, indeed? Larc must be here somewhere," said Ariesa.

"When all else fails, start at the top," Escad suggested. "Isn't that always where the bad guys hide out? I think they do it on purpose."

"That's the home of the bone dragon," Thoma whispered.

"The third floor, then," Ariesa agreed, and the wisps of flames danced in agreement, as the room began to rise up through the fortress.

----------------------------------------

They disembarked at the top, only to find out they were not alone. Recognition clicked instantly this time, as Ariesa recognized the woman they had seen at the base of the Norn Peaks.

"You again! I thought I had you trapped in the basement!" cried Sierra. "Are you looking for Larc?"

"Why, yes, we are," Escad replied, and for once Ariesa was forgiving of his arrogance. "You have anything to do with his disappearance?"

"Below. Safe. I checked for him first, naturally," Sierra replied. "Unconscious, or I would try to reason with him again. For him, there is some excuse, but why are the two of you helping him kill the dragons? Not that I would miss Jajara, but I know my responsibilities."

Ariesa felt rage burning within her once again. "The dragons, that try to hide away the power of Mana from the world? The power that could help my friends?"

Sierra looked at her point-blank. "Child, you know so little, but I see you will not listen to reason. Well... without you Drakonis will give up... and I will not have to kill Larc." And then she struck.

Her first attack was directed towards Ariesa, perhaps thinking her the weakest link, but the young woman was more than prepared to prove her wrong. "Child?!" she snarled, her blade whipping up to block first one, then the other, of Sierra's sharp knives.

The wolf-woman was _fast_, and her short weapons flew, leaving Ariesa pressed to keep back. Thoma wisely held back, and Escad tried several times to step in, but the mass of whirling blades prevented him from finding any opening. It left Ariesa one-on-one with her obviously skilled opponent.

Battle-madness had overtaken her, and her body moved of its own accord, the sound of metal clanging upon metal marking the progress of the fight. Sierra's knives barely grazed her, and when they did, she ignored them as she might a splinter. Her own sword jabbed, defended, feinted, swung, dealing as many if not more blows than she herself received.

She knew as soon as she hit. The blade cleaved into the back of Sierra's leg, and she crumpled to the floor, hamstrung. Ariesa stopped, unsure of what to do next, having no real desire to do more than end the fight.

The decision was taken from her. "Vadise, remove me!" Sierra's voiced boomed out, and in an instant, she was gone.

"She didn't even tell us where Larc was," griped Escad.

"He wasn't in the basement," Ariesa said. "Where else could he be?"

"That woman," Thoma began hesitantly, "said below… maybe the second floor, then? I think there's a secret room just off the main room."

They tumbled back into the elevator, and the dancing flames took them one floor below. Thoma led them to a room that appeared to be a dead end, but he stepped to the wall, fiddling with switches nearly invisible to Ariesa's eyes. A creak, and the wall swung open, to reveal Larc, prostrate on the ground.

----------------------------------------

Larc woke shakily, the sprits of the castle swimming through his head. When you were technically already dead, or at least in some sort of post-life existence, all the other undead seemed to assume you wanted to hang out with them.

"Right where Sierra said he would be," noted the voice of Ariesa approvingly.

Her words hit Larc. "Sierra... she was here?" he asked, forcing himself to concentrate.

"That white-furred dog-woman with attitude to spare?" answered Escad. "Yeah, she was here too. We drove her off."

Larc felt pained. If he could have completed this without her being involved... "My sister... I'm sorry... I should have known she would lay a trap... it's the sort of thing she would do." Ariesa laid a compassionate hand on his shoulder, and that on top of his worries for Sierra made him feel worse than ever for those he was using and fighting.

He disgusted himself.

Truthfully, they were all trapped, and he knew how that felt. She would be released at the end of this - if she even knew she was held at all. He had no choice, though, than to follow the will of Drakonis, until he could figure a way out. Willing or not, he was a dragoon, and his dragon controlled him.

Despite it all, he blamed himself. If he only had a little more strength… Sierra always had something within her he envied, a sort of brazen determination that he had never been able to emulate, and he wondered if it was that critical difference that had ultimately led them to their different fates now.

Not that it changed his desire for revenge. At the top of this fortress resided his nemesis. Or possibly two, depending on how you looked at it. The visit to the bone fortress was special, indeed.

"Next, the Throne of Corpses," Larc proclaimed. "Where we find the bone dragon." Determined, he led them back to the top floor, tensing in anticipation of meeting Jajara's dragoon. One who he had not seen in a long time.

"Wait!" Ariesa suddenly cried, and Larc reached a dead halt.

Before he could say anything, she had made a sharp right off the main passage, and suddenly he remembered what was in that room. He followed her into the side room to find her already leaning over the basin, it glowing softly pink then purple, radiating with a calmness seen nowhere else in the fortress.

"What is it?" asked Escad, leaning over the side as well.

Ariesa seemed entranced. "There is light within the darkness," she murmured, hypnotically, her eyes not breaking away.

Larc could feel the Mana rolling off the basin – a sort of balanced Mana, surprising to find in this home of death. It rolled off him, corrupted as he was, but it seemed to wrap gently around her despite it all.

That was what he had needed her for, after all – the balance that would let him approach the Mana Stones. They would reject him, reject even Escad, but he had been told that those stones would reach for her, seek her. There were few others for which this was true; he knew that much, though not the why of it all.

He couldn't bring himself to force her away. Instead, he stood there, a bit of jealousy creeping up for the things she still had the luxury to feel. He waited patiently, until eventually, she rose, a dreamy, clear-eyed look on her face.

"Let's go find that dragon and his Mana," she murmured peacefully.

Her mood clouded over soon enough, breaking as they stepped out onto a bridge of thick slabs of bone, held together by some sinewy component. Besides being fairly disgusting, the crossing was rickety, and made even more uncomfortable by the blue sky visible between the bones below and at either side, through the open windows of the fortress, letting winds whistle through.

They stepped onto the bridge with trepidation, making it halfway before a voice erupted to echo through the passage, more deathly that Drakonis's voice ever was.

"_Intruders! Bring a whole army if you wish! You will not pass!_" it boomed, the echoes shaking the bony bridge. Thoma cringed, knowing as well as Larc who awaited them; but Larc himself was some combination of indifferent and fiendishly eager.

"_Deathbringer_," he said, letting the venom drip from his words.

The voice was surprised. "Larc the Conqueror!" it cackled. "Ah, it all makes sense… So you are the servant of Drakonis. I always wondered where they shipped you off to. A long way from who we were once, yes. You should be quite an opponent. The dead killing the dead. To think we would meet again like this, after a hundred years..."

"And you, Irzoile," Larc said scornfully. "Serving the bidding of the dragon of death. Slavery in the afterlife. A fitting end for you as well, perhaps?" The only response was a snarl.

"How did we miss this guy earlier?" wondered Ariesa.

"Sierra probably wanted to keep you away. You won't stand a chance against this guy without me." Larc felt a stab of pain. "It's the sort of thing she would do."

Ariesa nodded slowly, considering, as Deathbringer made his appearance.

Deathbringer was larger than life, but seemingly fragile nevertheless. The onetime emperor was now a pathetic shade, his drawn skin making him seem as skeletal as the bleached bones of the fortress. That decayed face, however, was still able to smile an evil grin.

Larc had his axe out, his hand gripping it until his knuckles turned white. He stepped forward, a man determined. He spoke one word. "_Nemesis_."

Deathbringer laughed then, a hollow, rancid sound. "Perhaps. The Underworld is no friend of mine, trapped in servitude as I am… But I cannot help but respect the power of death. And I will bring it to you!"

The enormous dragoon bore no visible weapon, but it was quickly apparent that whatever powers death had given him, he didn't need one. Long, knife-sharp claws emerged from his hands, and Larc dodged awkwardly from those quintuple blades.

A second swipe would have neatly cleaved into Larc, but Escad was already there to block. The muscles of his arms strained to hold his sword against those razored talons, giving Larc enough time to stumbled out of range before Escad dropped his sword, dodging himself.

Deathbringer lost balance momentarily, recovering and retreating. Larc knew immediately what was happening. "He's going to attack with magic!" he shouted.

Barely on the end of the sentence, bolts of deathly energy rained down on them, purplish-black crackles of energy darting forward, only to steer neatly around the trio of warriors.

Their enemy looked surprised. "So," he mumbled. "Your connection to the Underworld protects you some. The men, there is some explanation, but you - " he said, turning to Ariesa – "what do you have to do with the Underworld?"

She had rolled out of the way of that magic attack, but it might have caught her nevertheless had it not been deflected. Now, she stood, confused, and obviously considering the question, as Deathbringer's eyes bored into her. "Ah… I see…" he said thoughtfully. "How many lies did they tell you, girl, to bring you here?"

Ariesa only stood her ground, weapon in hand and anger contorting her face.

"But I sense another," Deathbringer continued, turning to where Thoma cringed back against the wall, trying to avoid the self-proclaimed Emperor's view. "Minion!" Irzoile roared. "Have you no respect?"

The only reason his claws did not end Thoma's life then and there was Larc's swift dive to block and repel the attack. The young man seemed more afraid than ever. "I can't fight him," he whispered urgently. "He holds me still…" As he said it, his hands seemed to fall without his will, and he took steps toward his former liege, his eyes suddenly focused forward. "It's stronger this close to him…"

Escad grabbed him from behind, and Thoma resisted, pulling his sword to flail it randomly at the older man. "Fight it, damn you!" Escad yelled, struggling to subdue Thoma.

Deathbringer only cackled. "That's it, my servant," he said soothingly. "Destroy my enemies."

"We have to finish off Deathbringer to break the bond!" Larc shouted. He caught Ariesa's eye, and she nodded.

She was facing Deathbringer's back, and with a tremendous leap, planted her sword firmly in his torso. Odd, whitish blood spurted out in front of him, as her sword poked out where the heart would be found.

Larc knew. "You've hit it!" he called encouragingly. For the undead, the organs were still activated, now in possession of their master, but vulnerable nevertheless.

Thoma screamed as he was freed from his bond of servitude, and Escad let him go as he tumbled to the floor. "The ghost of the emperor," he groaned. "The one that controlled us, caused us so much pain…"

The ghost had crumpled forward, and Ariesa yanked her sword out, twisting it sadistically for good measure. Irzoile's lifeblood dripped out, slipping between the gaps of the bridge to land somewhere below in the fortress, among all the other death that lay there. Even in the obvious throes of death, he laughed, a hollow sound resonating in that skeletal face.

"Most impressive, girl," he complimented Ariesa. "There is something in your blood, something you do not know yet… Jajara should have taken you himself before Drakonis found you. But he will make up for that mistake soon enough, I'm sure."

"The bone dragon?" she asked uncertainly. "Why? What does he want? Who is he?"

"Someone who carries the burden of death upon him." An ironic comment, coming from the one known as Deathbringer, and ironic laughter followed. "You will discover what that means soon enough. And the burden of death on _you_ if you lose… as if you didn't already have nothing to lose. But then again, none of us do, don't we, Larc?"

Larc stepped forward, a dispassionate expression neatly concealing his fury at the taunt. The last pretense at life left the body of Irzoile Enshaalac, and Larc stood for a moment, contemplating the sequence of events that had led them both to meet again.

But that was not the end of it. The one that had condemned him to his servile existence still waited.

----------------------------------------

Ariesa tried to reach forward, trying to detect the Stone that lay before them with her newly-unleashed sense of Mana. But even had she been able to sense it, it was heavily compressed under a thick layer of foreboding as they entered Jajara's throne room.

_The Throne of Corpses_. That was what Larc had called it, the domain of the dragon of darkness and death, and she understood well enough why. Skulls of various creatures littered the outskirts, impaled on spikes for maximal display, and nondescript bones littered the floor.

This close, Ariesa _could_ feel a bit of the Stone of Darkness, but it was… odd. She strained to get closer, to understand its power, but it felt slippery, falling out of her grasp every time she nearly made the connection. And in those instants of contact… it was a maddening conglomeration of duality and opposition, cohesion and separation, a hodgepodge of conflicts all rolling over each other to sync and diverge once again…

Her ability was limited, but Larc raised his snout as if sniffing the air, every muscle tensing in response to the Stone's power. Escad seemed perturbed, and even Thoma caught the mood. "Jajara!" Larc roared. "I know you're here! Come out to meet us, and answer for your crimes!"

"You would be correct, dragoon." The voice resonated across the caverns, not the harsh scraping of the dragoon, but something ancient, deathly, and terrifying. Before them, Jajara came into view, blackness seeming to follow him, his form distinguished by the negative space around him, and Ariesa saw the truth of the name bone dragon.

"Were you waiting for us?" Escad demanded rashly.

Nothing was left of the dragon but his skeleton, it frighteningly animated as if it was a whole being still. Hollow eye sockets turned to focus on Escad. "Of course," that even, nearly velvet-smooth voice replied, in stark contrast to the rotted vision before them. "My dragoon's death throes alerted me to your presence quickly enough. Then again, he was technically dead already, so I can fix him up anytime." He laughed, the sound echoing mockingly across the chamber. "But why are you here, Larc? Does Drakonis think he can escape my control, that he can gather Mana once again, after all the bloodshed he caused a thousand years ago? Does he still pretend he is the Dragon Emperor?"

Larc's jaw clenched. " I have little choice. You know that well."

"This is true," Jajara acknowledged. "My dragoon once wished to call himself Emperor as well. He learned his place, as Drakonis will soon enough. I hold the leashes of both." He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice resonated across the chambers. "_I_ am the one who rules. I have the powers of light and dark, here in this fortress. I have survived the powers of Shade as few others have. And _you_, dragoon of Drakonis, come here to challenge _me_?!"

Ariesa was tired of standing back, and she wanted some answers. "How could you!" she screamed, not sure where the words were coming from. "The emperor who destroyed the Jumi and half the world looking for more power… how could you let him live, to control his soldiers living and dead, and let the Empire survive?"

Jajara looked at her as if he had only just noticed her. His gaze was penetrating but there was nothing of Akravator's wisdom in it, mere driven passion. "So..." the dragon said, and Ariesa flinched at the sound coming from that bony, dead jaw. "So this is what Drakonis tries. Perhaps he was more slippery than I thought. The only question is, did he send you here for the Stones, or something more?"

"Answer my question." There was a pit in her stomach, but she gazed down Jajara defiantly.

"Do you really want to know?" he asked, not waiting for her to nod. "The Empire receded. Is that not enough?"

Ariesa stubbornly maintained the gaze. "Very well," Jajara sighed. He floated eerily above, out of reach of all their weapons. "It will not hurt you to know. He was once my nemesis, but as my servant and ally, his subjects are _mine_. Rather than let him free to find what may be called the ultimate weapon, I use him to reach it first. A devil's bargain, so to speak."

"Polpota!" Ariesa cried. "The soldiers…"

"You knew of that?" Jajara questioned. "No matter. The dead are mine anyway, not Drakonis's. Nor Olbohn's, or Aion's, or anyone else's who think they are in charge of the Underworld. How could a wisdom compare to the Dragon of Knowledge? It doesn't matter what they pretend, I know I am the true power."

"What do you expect to do with the Sword?" demanded Escad.

Jajara swiveled. "You don't get it at all, do you? I thought you, at least, might understand the powers of dark. The Goddess is our savior, and our nemesis. We will have to fight her as well as to love her. Only by understanding Her darkness can we hope to bring her to life once again." The thought gave Ariesa chills.

Larc snorted. "Excuses."

"You say so, servant of Drakonis?" Larc flinched at Jajara's method of address. "You will never understand why I sent you to the Underworld, and kept Deathbringer here, what sort of balance must be maintained. You think you can know everything?" the dragon said, scathingly. "The Goddess's plan is complex, and it is not for the likes of you to know it all."

"I know well enough," protested Larc.

"Do you?" Jajara's voice, his dead, bony gaze turned sinister. "The dragons, the wisdoms, they will not tell you all. It is not a matter of good and evil. Some crystals glow with the light that many believe is the Goddess; some, like mine, hold chaos, and that is of Her as well. I am the challenge of everyone who thinks they can control that chaos. I am their nemesis."

"You are a pathetic shade of a dragon who used to be great," sneered Larc. "Your time is up. In the stead of Drakonis… I have come to slay you!"

"Then let it _begin_!" Jarara boomed, crashing to the floor, rattling the piles of bones all around him and shaking the skulls loose from the walls. They struck the ground, shattering in all directions, as the bone dragon struck with a roar.

Akravator was nothing compared to Jajara, as weapons clanged uselessly against the dragon's bones. Jajara only laughed, swiping skeletal claws towards them almost scornfully, broadsiding Ariesa and sending her skidding across the ground. She groaned, pulling herself to hands and knees and blindly grabbing for her fallen sword.

The only real advantage they had was in numbers. Escad feinted on one side, and Thoma dove in on the other, his lighter sword scoring against the dragon's leg with an ear-splitting squeal. Jajara whirled to combat the new nuisance, and Larc's axe caught a rib, cracking the bond cleanly in half.

The dragon reared, and screamed. Larc jumped backwards. "Look out!" he shouted, and Ariesa dove for cover a split second before waves of that dark energy, the same as Deathbringer had used but a hundred times more powerful, exploded from the dragon in all directions.

It was a thousand strikes that they were using to wear their enemy down, splintering, shattering bones wherever they could find them. Ariesa began to have hope they could win still, when with a crack, Jajara wrenched off one of his own rib bones, it eerily rejoining to connect the leg that was hanging limply.

"Larc!" she cried, but the dragoon already understood, and gave a nod in her direction. She dove forward, her stroke awkward, but she knew it was only a feint. Escad followed right behind her, and the dragon's head swung wildly between the two, deciding which to attack first.

It did not matter. Ariesa saw Larc reach the Stone beyond, and Jajara emitted a final, splitting shriek as he was cut off from the source of his power. His skeleton crumpled into pieces before their very eyes.

His skull still spoke, the disembodied jaw forming the words. "Drakonis! The monster who tried to destroy us all once already, so long ago," the bone dragon sputtered. "He will find his nemesis soon enough." With that, the skeleton faded, dissolving into motes of blackish-purple light, and an eerie silence settled over what had once been his throne.

Ariesa stepped delicately around the remaining stones littering the floor, to where Larc stood behind the Stone. Its feeling was already fading; Larc had nearly finished draining it. That made her sad, in a way she couldn't entirely explain.

Larc himself stood with head bowed, one hand on the stone as its light faded. When he spoke, she wasn't sure if he was talking to her, or to himself. "We know Mana has power," he began, "but why does it exist at all? Why does one seek it, only to have another wither and die?"

Ariesa had no answer, and an uncomfortable silence descended. "What now?" she wondered out loud, mostly to break the moment.

"Next, Vadise," replied Larc. It wasn't really the question she was asking, but she supposed the answer would have to do.

"Can you find her? She's a slippery one," Escad asked.

"I don't need to." Larc looked at him witheringly. "I can find Sierra easily enough, and I'll be damned if they aren't together."

"Aren't you already damned?" Escad asked, grinning, and even Thoma chuckled, but Ariesa paused in thought. Sierra… the wolf-woman lower in the Fortress… someone important to Larc. There was still much going on here that she did not understand.

----------------------------------------

Bud scampered along, his steps positively whimsical compared to Elazul's determined strides, as they traveled towards the base of the Norn Peaks.

The Jumi Knight was troubled. He had been receiving the oddest feelings from his core since they had left the junkyard, first gentle and peaceful, then chaotic and troubled, but both powerful enough to cause him pain. Similar to the pain that had crumpled him before, though not as strong; perhaps he was getting used to it. He tried to hide it, but there was no concealing things from Pearl, and every time she looked at him with concern covering her pale face.

They entered a village, a strange village of treehouses on stilts, but the village was not only deserted, but _decimated_. Houses had been ripped into shreds as if by an enormous wind.

Almost deserted. One person remained. In the middle of all the wreckage, bowed towards the ground and so still she could have been mistaken for scenery, was a woman of the wolf-clan.

Elazul ran to her, protective instinct kicking in. "What happened here?" he asked, dropping to the ground by her side.

The wolf-woman raised a mournful face. "I tried to stop them at the fortress… but I was driven off… and I returned here, to find… this." She began to cry, turning her head as she tried to hide it from the newcomers. Slowly the story spilled out, leaving them all slightly incredulous.

Bud inched slightly closer to his sister, wanting the comfort of her presence but trying not to make it obvious. "That's definitely Ariesa," Elazul said grimly. "But why would she do such a thing?"

"Does it matter?" the woman who introduced herself as Sierra replied. "There is only one hope, and that is to return to the White Forest, and protect Vadise."

"We'll go with you," replied Daena.


	37. Secrets: Sparkle

**37. Secrets: Sparkle**

Her name was Crystalle. She was a snow fairie, one of those who inhabited the frozen Fieg Snowfields, and the forest she traversed now was rather warmer than she was accustomed to. Nevertheless, she floated serenely over the path, paying the weather little mind.

It mattered not for what she had come here to do.

It was always tricky to find one's way through the White Forest; once it had been possible only at night, now the rumor was one only could do so with the blessing of the dragon that guarded it. Crystalle did not need it; fairies did not travel on the same paths as others.

The tree positively radiated up ahead, drawing her like a beacon. Not _the_ tree, that was lost along with the fairie heritage of the past. But it was another tree she was looking for today.

This tree was quite ancient in its own right, and had enough Mana to it to be worthy of respect. It was what lay beyond, in the small glade, that made it that way, and Crystalle drew an ethereal breath at the feeling of the new Mana Stone, not quite ripe but growing, being nurtured. The small trees broke into a clearing, and finally, she saw the tree with the primitive sense of vision.

Lilipeas scattered around, _pwa_-ing in that soft, melodious tone. They were there as company, perhaps, for the enormous white dragon who reclined on the tree's roots, accompanied by her ever-present dragoon.

The dragoon tensed visibly, but did not move. Crystalle could sense the ancestry of the Beast Kingdom and of Forcena in her; like all true creatures of Mana, she was able to perceive those connections of history, of descent, that subtly made one what one was today.

But the dragoon posed no threat, and instead, Crystalle focused her attention on the dragon. Vadise had her one eye closed as she languorously breathed in the air of the forest, but it snapped open as the fairy grew close. The other socket was puckered and dry… part of the legacy of Deathbringer.

In a roundabout sense, Deathbringer was the reason she was here today; one of many reasons, but overall, all those reasons came from one and the same. The world needed a better future, she knew; and it was that hope that had brought her here, hope for something more. If it could become so.

"Snow faerie." The one eye of Vadise, a dragon far more ancient than her tree, traveled towards her, even as the rest of the dragon's body did not move. "What brings you here, so far from your domain?" Her voice was low, lyrical, with the vaguest remnants of an accent in Mana tongue that had softened over the centuries.

"Vadise. Dragon Princess." Crystalle curtsied and bowed her head to honor the ancient guardian of the Stone. Some fairies were rather jealous of the dragons, feeling almost as if their legacy had been stolen from them, the same sort that hated the humans for many of the same reasons. Crystalle was not one of those. "I come here today to ask for a bit of your stone."

A brief, but potent statement, and Vadise understood immediately, snapping her neck upwards as she was brought suddenly, sharply to attention. "Who do you wish to be Jumi?" she demanded, voice like a whip.

The fairy recoiled slightly at the abruptness of the response. She spoke hesitantly. "There is… a one..."

"Spill it," the dragoon growled for her dragon, knives suddenly unsheathed. "We have no time for frivolities here."

"_Sierra_." Vadise cast a look upon her impulsive dragoon, layering meaning into the simple use of her name. Sierra looked a bit abashed, but the weapons were only lowered slightly.

After centuries of conflict, and Deathbringer's recent machinations… the defensive response was unsurprising. Had she been human, Crystalle might have been perturbed. Instead, she met the dragon's gaze, locking with that one enormous blue eye as she opened herself to the small amount of Mana she could access, a little portal to the fairy dimension, and _showed_ Vadise.

Understanding was near instantaneous, and the dragon flinched as if struck. A large, watery tear welled up at the corner of her one away, but was blinked away so quickly that Crystalle could not be sure she had not imagined it.

"Really?" Vadise said softly, and Crystalle only nodded.

"Wait here," the dragon princess ordered, turning her enormous body with surprising grace, and somehow disappearing into the forest itself.

----------------------------------------

The trees closed behind her, protecting her from both sight and sense, but they could not protect her from the thought that suddenly filled her head, thoughts she thought she had long since buried. She had mourned the loss of the fairies in the wars centuries before, and she had felt pain as Deathbringer had destroyed the Jumi in his attack on their city, only a handful of years ago. An attack that should not have been possible. An attack that she had hoped, for Lady Blackpearl's sake, would never happen.

Jajara had long been preaching that death would take hold before life could once again. But it should never have happened to the Jumi.

Now, suddenly, the fairy had appeared, seeking something no one had ever dared to ask her for, and all those feelings were dredged up again. Idly, she wondered if it was the Goddess herself, forcing her to feel, forcing her to care.

The green cane pulsed softly in time with the new Mana Stone behind it, adding the memories of Anuella to all the sharp memories now cutting the soul of the white dragon. She picked it up in one talon as if it was a torch, gliding past the Stone, the crystal humming almost quizzically as she passed.

It was not the new stone Crystalle wanted. It was the old Tree Stone, whose shattered bits had nearly merged with the forest under the green cane's influence, it pulling Mana in a way only a few other places, like Mekiv, did. There was little enough of the Stone left, the sparsest remnants only, which Vadise irrationally guarded as mementoes of an era gone.

She had never let any of those pieces go; none had ever been used for a Jumi. Nor had she expected any more Jumi to be formed. After hunting, persecution, isolation, destruction… who would even want to?

Then again, perhaps a simple finicky possessiveness meant that she had never allowed any Jumi to have a fragment of _her_ stone. It was the only untouched of the original stones, and it was so because she had protected it.

She had reason to make an exception now.

_What would Blackpearl think_? she wondered. Vadise had no reason _not_ to assume the woman was not as dead as the rest of them; the occasional rumors of a Jumi surviving, found far away from his or her home, were scant and unsubstantiated. Those who had escaped the city had largely fallen to the hunting that had arisen once again, that same morbid desire of others that had driven them into their city in the first place. With a silent prayer to the Goddess of the future, and a wish for the Jumi woman she had once known, she cast her gaze over the gems before her… and knew it as soon as she found it.

There were no sharp edges to it; Mana had neatly softened the angles into a perfectly symmetrical oval, and as she picked it up, the green cane pulsed in a sort of recognition. It was a rich, bright blue, flecked with gold, like stars in the night sky… "Or dust scattered on the wind," she whispered to the stone. "Mana itself, scattered into pieces, coming together once again. Fragments, like the Jumi themselves are now." She could _feel_ the slender trails and whorls of all the elements inside, mixing, separating, joining once again.

She looked carefully at the swirls of gold through the stone, the elements maintained in a tenuous balance that one wondered why it did not all fall to ashes. _As the Goddess once had_. Sometimes it seemed almost easier to keep things separate, and opposite, but in that the magic of life was missing, its sparkle was destroyed.

There was power in this stone, the Tree element being the truest expression of the Goddess - the element of life, love, and the future. The stone made her want to cry with its memories, and she wondered what legacy she was granting to the human it transformed. Naturally, that Jumi would not be able to cry… but would he appreciate it, understand it? Or was it even a _he_? Come to think of it, she wasn't even sure if it was meant for a boy or a girl.

Vadise might have wished the walk back had been longer, but she found herself back by her tree quickly enough, the snow fairie waiting patiently yet expectantly. She slowly approached Crystalle, finally drawing close and leaning forward to meet her eye-to-eye, regarding her with heavy solemnity.

"A child, you showed me, and that was all, a child that must become Jumi, or else." Vadise felt her own voice quavering, wondering at the sacrifice that was about to be made, the how, the why, the _what_ that had led to this necessity today. "Not just _any_ Jumi, but a Jumi with a bit of nearly the Goddess herself, a bit of the Tree element in which She housed her soul. Can a child even survive such a transformation?"

Crystalle clutched the gift, her aura exuding thanks. "We can only hope."

----------------------------------------

**Author's Extended and Reflective Note:** Yes, a quick update this time! Because they are relatively short… though not without potency. It should be pretty obvious whose core is being traded around in this chapter…

And as for the duo… I think I've made it evident that Vadise is taking a slightly different approach to the saving of Mana and the Goddess, compared to some of the other dragons.

I'm a bit relieved to be finishing out the Dragon Arc. The past several chapters were pretty intense to arrange and write. For those of you who liked chapter 36… chapter 40 promises to be equally SLAMMIN'.

So, what next? I will probably complete most of the Jumi Arc as well before the next update. Right now, I have almost thirty pages of notes (handwritten, not typed!) on those chapters, including a quick 'n dirty game transcript. So... it will probably take a couple weeks to get through. In the meantime, I hope to have another chapter or two up for my side project, "The Last Amazon".

And then what? If the Jumi Arc ends soon… but I've promised you twenty-two more chapters… ? Stay tuned!

I usually prefer to respond directly and personally to reviewers, but I have a review without a reply link, so I'm going to do it here.

To **Dee**: Thanks! I'm glad you like the "Secrets" chapters. I've noticed approximately a quarter of readers read only the "Legends" chapters, perhaps for lack of knowledge of SD3? That's fine with me if they are enjoying the story, but those "Secrets" chapters contain a lot of information that becomes more and more relevant near the end.

I was sorry to see Anuella go myself, but it's canon, and I do take a dark edge to my stories where not everyone has a happy ending.

Obviously you know the LoM "World History", but I'm going to have to disappoint you on the flying ship part. I used almost all of that history, either literally or metaphorically, except for two parts: The Moon-Gods-and-Flammies, which were substituted by SD3 (the story's a crossover, after all) and the Janna-fairy-stuff.

The reason is: whereas most of the world history had an effect on the modern LoM world (wisdoms, founding of Geo, disappearance of Jumi, etc. etc…) that particular aspect… doesn't really have anything to do with anything else ingame. I suppose I could have crafted something out of it, but I didn't feel like I was given enough complexity slash possibilities to work with. Though one idea I did take from it… the "angel that became Jumi"… Jumi are more fairy-ish than fairies nowadays, so they are "angels" in a way, especially with their healing powers, don't you think?

What you CAN look forward to… Several of the next Secrets chapter will have character backstories, i.e. "modern history", but linking them into the more ancient history. There will also be more about the Empire, and the events preceding and following the climactic scene of chapter 33; and the SD3 story and characters will resurge as we get closer to the end.

OK, enough blabbing! Go read, everyone!


	38. Legends: Surrender

**38. Legends: Surrender**

"Sometimes we need to hurt others to protect our precious ones."

It had been Sandra who said it, and he hated that. But he felt the truth of it nevertheless.

Elazul looked at Pearl, and wondered about his commitments, to her, to Ariesa, to all the people around him. He didn't know what to do half the time, and he was only more confused by what was going on with Ariesa and why.

The twins were agitated too. They were not taking the story Sierra told well, and they chattered together nervously, consoling each other. All Elazul had gotten out of Sierra was that Ariesa was somehow tied to the Underworld, and Sierra's own brother, and that bastard Escad was somehow the bridge to it all.

"You know of Deathbringer?" Sierra said, out of nowhere.

Elazul grew grim. "The one who destroyed the Jumi city, until someone sent him to the Underworld where he belongs."

Sierra gained a weird expression. "Something like that. Well, he was as mad for power as Drakonis, and he wanted not only the Stones guarded by the dragons, but even the Sword, if he could get it. Whatever he could get his hands on. Drakonis… perhaps he wants the sword, perhaps the Stones he once sought are enough, but either way, somehow your girl is the one to help him get to it."

Behind them, Daena chatted quietly with Pearl, as they entered the forest known only as the White Forest. Elazul pondered Sierra's words, as the dragoon led the way, silently through the trees. This was her home, after all.

"Why is it the White Forest?" Lisa asked suddenly, breaking the hushed silence that had settled over the party. "It looks pretty green."

Sierra turned. "You are elven, you should know." She harrumphed slightly, and Lisa looked a bit chastened. "This was once the forest where the elves lived, and the home of the Mana Stone of Tree. The Mana is powerful here; somehow, Dryad protects this still, and it never is winter here. The sun is always pure and light, therefore, the White Forest."

Elazul didn't know about the sun thing, but he had felt the Mana since they entered, a slow build that his core pulsed neatly in time with. Sierra led them into a clearing dominated by an enormous, ancient tree, the feeling here building to a crescendo in a way he hadn't experienced before. The crack in his core protested slightly with the intensity.

Daena felt it too. "The Goddess is close here," she told him.

"Is this the Mana tree?" asked Bud doubtfully.

Daena motioned as if to ruffle his hair, then stopped. "No, silly. The Mana Tree is gone."

"For the moment," replied an ancient, dignified voice, and they turned to see an graceful white creature sidle into the clearing.

Bud and Lisa gaped openly. "A _dragon_," the boy said in awe. "A real, live dragon." Lisa only stared.

Elazul couldn't help but be slightly impressed himself. This must be the dragon Vadise whom Sierra served, a creature of the Goddess herself, older than the entire race of Jumi.

Sierra, for her part, ran to her liege like a child to her mother, and Vadise seemed to return the affection. It was a warm bond that spoke of years of association, somehow reminiscent of the knight-guardian bond. _A bond impossible for outsiders to understand_, he thought, looking at Pearl.

Pearl was the only one who had not spoken since entering the clearing. She had her eyes half-closed, with a faraway expression that now made Elazul a little fearful; scared he might lose her again, even though he didn't really understand to what.

"Sierra," Vadise began, her melodious and dignified voice echoing slightly off the trees. "Who are all these strangers you have brought here?" The dragon stretched her neck forward, a single blue eye regarding them pointedly, widening in surprise when she saw Pearl. "Or are they strangers, indeed?" she asked, expression contemplative.

Pearl only looked back, and Elazul could sense the vague resonance between core and dragon, different expressions of Mana attempting to harmonize. He felt his own core reaching for that as well, awkwardly, young and inexperienced.

"I hope… they are of help," Sierra replied. "Vadise, we do not have much time." She related the same story she had told them along the way, in more detail this time, the other members of her audience paying rapt attention.

As the dragoon continued, Vadise's expression grew increasingly grave. "Is it so, Sierra?" she replied. "Then we have much to worry about… I had warned them, Jajara, Akravator, that I thought Drakonis and Larc might be coming, I felt it… but I cannot know how much they listened to me." She mused for a moment. "Drakonis's impulse towards betrayal is unsurprising, but Jajara had sworn he could keep him under control. How he escaped that control, I wonder… perhaps the girl you speak of is the key…"

"_Ariesa_," Elazul jutted in. "That's her _name_."

The dragon seemed to finally take full notice of him, and he single eye widened briefly, a hint of poignant sadness that disappeared so quickly he wasn't sure he had seen it at all.

"To Drakonis, she is… something else altogether," she told Elazul, carefully. "Often, one is a little more than what one thinks one is. You might be surprised what is found within yourself…"

Her expression now fixed on him, then traveling to his core, with a calculating sort of quality that Elazul didn't particularly care for, suddenly feeling very objectified. "What?!" he demanded.

Vadise started slightly,, almost a little affronted. "Why… nothing," she finally replied. "It's just… you made me think of something, long ago." Elazul had the certain, imperceptible feeling that she was keeping secrets from them.

"Long ago?" Pearl asked, suddenly alert. "I'd like to know."

Vadise scrutinized her closely, in much the same way she had weighed and measured Elazul. "Guardian, do you know your elementals?" she asked. "Do you know who once resided here, and protected the forest?"

"Dryad, guardian of tree," recited Pearl dutifully.

"Yes," Vadise replied. "Dryad, guardian of the sun, and all things that emerge. Counterpart to Luna, guardian of the moon, and all things that are in nothingness. A sad day for humankind when the sacred spirit of the moon became Aura, the spirit of gold, civilization, and greed. All empty."

"What does all this have to do with Ariesa?" Elazul demanded.

"Why… nothing. At least not much," Vadise replied. "But there are few Dragons of Knowledge in this world. Don't you think you, one of the Jumi, could learn from someone who has been guarding the Mana Stone for years?"

"The Mana Stone?" Elazul exclaimed. "How is one _here_?" Even as he asked, he realized, however it happened, it was true; and suddenly it was clear to him what that strange intensity of feeling was all about.

"I want to see it," said Pearl eagerly.

"Very well, then," replied Vadise. "Come, if you want to see, time is short." And she motioned to a small glade beyond.

Pearl was the first to enter, suddenly running towards it with an urgency Elazul could feel in his core, but could not explain. He hurriedly followed her.

She was gazing at the sparkling stone as he entered, dreamily, peacefully undisturbed. It was a little taller than she herself, shining with a pulsating light that shimmered fleetingly through all the other colors of the spectrum. She turned slowly at his entry, sensing her knight approaching. "Elazul… it feels wonderful…" she said, her face blushing and a bit rapturous.

The slow hum of the Mana Stone echoed with his core, and he was drawn to it, its shifting color now green, now blue. It pulled him close, it infected him, it filled him…

It _hurt_.

Elazul had never experienced anything like this, pleasure and pain all rolled into one, the pain rising as he grew closer, but the pleasure such that he couldn't stay away. He reached out his right hand, feeling the arm quiver, almost touching the stone, so close…

Pearl's face was above him. "Elazul!" she was crying. "Elazul, are you alright?"

He vaguely sensed the others around him – the twins, Daena, a large white dragon that he vaguely recalled was Vadise – and he sat up, groggily. "What happened?" he said, hearing his words come out slurred.

He tried to focus on someone, and ended up looking towards Vadise. She only shrugged. "Ask your guardian. I suspect she knows best."

The others stepped back them a little privacy. Pearl had leaned over him, her little arms balancing her weight on his chest. He raised his head to look in her eyes, one hand covering the two of hers in what he hoped was a comforting manner. "You… You didn't feel the same things I did, I think," she began haltingly. "I felt… just this peace… but you… it was like a clash at the same time…"

"I think it might have been your core," she finished rapidly.

Elazul didn't doubt that. The damage still remained, and it had been causing him pain ever since. But that peculiar synergy with the Mana Stone…

He really should have thought that one through.

Pearl reached one small hand for his core, damaged though it was, and he felt that familiar warm feeling he felt at her touch. It had always helped to center him, to remember who, and what, he was.

"Pearl," he replied softly, but he didn't need to say the rest, feeling her worry drain slightly. But not completely.

She looked around nervously. "Elazul… it's alright," she told him. "I think… I think it wanted you, but it couldn't have you, not the way you are now. What do you think it wants from you?" she finished, pleadingly.

"I don't know," he told her. _But I'm afraid._

"No time for that, they come," said Sierra, raising her snout in the air abruptly.

----------------------------------------

"There's something throwing off my senses here." Larc was irritated.

"Well, if you can't find the way, old dog, then we're really in trouble." Escad was as flippant as ever. Thoma was distracted by it all, taking in the scenery, blinking his eyes at the light as she expected one trapped for so long by Deathbringer might.

Ariesa remained silent as the men bantered. Ever since the Bone Fortress, she had started to worry. She thought she knew what they were doing, but now the whole thing was bothering her, as they journeyed through the forest. Larc led, but they progressed slowly, he having to stop every few minutes to reorient himself once again.

The path broke suddenly into a substantial clearing, at the end of which sat an enormous tree. She knew they had reached the home of the dragon Vadise, and sure enough, that same dragon lounged at the seat of the tree, regarding them interestedly with head cocked at an angle.

But the dragon was not the only one there.

Her eyes latched onto a crowd of her friends, friends she had crept away from like a thief in the night. But only one rose his eyes to meet hers. _Elazul_.

She wanted to run to greet him, throw her arms around him, but his expression was wary and not entirely friendly, in a way that really bothered her. _How did they get here, anyway?_ she wondered.

He took a few careful steps towards her, but when she moved towards him, he unconsciously raised a hand as if to hold her back, leaving a distance of several feet between them.

"What are you doing?" he asked. There was a vein of… indifference, disappointment, something like that in his voice, and even worse… what was _missing_ was the warmth of friendship. It was the same way he had regarded her when they had first met, as if she was barely worth noticing.

It hurt her more than she could say.

"The... the Mana Stones," she replied shakily. "I wanted them to help Pearl..." She didn't need to say more. His eyes told her he understood; but he did not approve. He had lost his faith in her, and she floundered, not sure what to say that would bring it back.

She had no chance, before Sierra interrupted. "Larc, so you have finally come this far. Can you not see what Drakonis is trying to do? He did not order you to slay dragons for the sake of revenge, or justice! He is trying to snatch Mana energy, the source of all power in the world!"

"I know," Larc replied, head hanging slightly.

Ariesa turned the fury she had been holding back on him. "You _used_ me! You told me the Mana Stones would help Pearl, help the Jumi! I would have never gone along otherwise!"

Larc looked struck. Sierra jumped in. "Larc! Do you not know what you are doing? How could you join a… creature… like Drakonis?"

"You don't understand, Ariesa… the choice was not mine… and all the dragons have a role." Larc faltered. "I am a dragoon, and I am beholden to my dragon. You, my sister, should know this most of all," he finished, head gesturing to Vadise.

_Sister_? Ariesa wondered, looking from one to the other. _How did they end up on opposite sides?_ Looking around in confusion, her eyes fell on Escad, and she fed all her fury in that direction. He shrugged uncomfortably, taking a few steps back, oddly joining Daena's side; the neko lifted one eyebrow at him, but did not step away.

Sierra stood, knives flashing. "I cannot let anyone disrupt the order in the world! Not even my brother! Larc, how can you not see what would happen if Drakonis returned to the surface?"

Larc seemed chided, but pleading. "If he does then I, his knight, shall return as well. It's my only chance. Please, Sierra, try to understand!"

Sierra only sniffed. "The Goddess will judge you, Larc, when she returns."

"_Sierra_." The dragoon hushed at the one word from the dragon. "It is not him. Drakonis has violated the contract."

"Contract…?" Sierra asked, puzzled.

Vadise hung her head. "There is much yet that you do not know, things I have not been at liberty to tell you, for fear that it would prevent the Goddess's plan from coming to fruition. But for now… know a brother and sister must not shed the blood they share. There are times to fight, as did Akravator and Jajara, and times to surrender."

"Fair enough," Larc replied, blustering confidence returning. "Save me some trouble, Vadise, and just tell me where the Mana Stone is. For my sister's sake, I'd rather not kill you like the other dragons."

Vadise cocked her head nonchalantly to her right and behind her. "I have no fear of Drakonis, Larc, and the Mana Stones should be open to all they wish to welcome. Straight down that path. Go, Larc, and see the truth of what Drakonis has set into motion. Find out if it reaches for you as it did the Jumi."

Elazul flinched slightly at that. "Good dragon," Larc said scornfully.

----------------------------------------

No one much seemed to want to join Larc at the Stone. Escad cared little one way or the other, he had already gotten what he wanted – or so he thought - and Ariesa was balking at the whole thing, making him feel bad that he had to bring her. But of course, he had little choice, with a master like Drakonis.

He approached the stone, already preparing the spell that would divert its power for Drakonis to use. It hummed questioningly, perhaps sensing his motives were not the purest, light flickering over it in a more agitated manner at his approach.

It made him want to apologize to the thing, looking around first to make sure no one was there to see him talking to the big piece of glowing rock. "I'm sorry," he told it, and it shimmered once again in response. "But I shall soon be free… of course, so will Drakonis. But I have a plan…"

He turned his head to the larger clearing behind, though he could see nothing through the trees. "Sierra, my dear sister, do not worry…"

The stone settled to a sad haze, and Larc reached out to touch it.

Once the dirty deed was done, Larc returned to the clearing to find eyes watching him on all sides. On one side, the two Jumi and their companions waiting with Sierra and Vadise, the knight watching him even more pensively than his own sister did. He tried to ignore both those pairs of eyes before walking over to his own, smaller group.

"Where to now?" Escad cut to the point.

"Nowhere. Three stones are plenty. I pity the poor fool who tries to handle more than that without it driving him mad."

"In that case?" Escad demanded. "I did what I had to. I found the one you were looking for. I should go down there and disembowel your master myself for dragging me into this."

"You are freed," Larc agreed. He doubted he and Escad would have been able to get anywhere near the stones without _her_ to balance them out. But he also knew Drakonis was hardly going to give Escad a chance to exact revenge, and Escad knew quite well what would happen if he tried to collect it himself. "The bargain has been met. I recommend you leave and call it even."

He felt as if a weight had been lifted, one more unpleasant burden that was his to bear no longer. Not that it was really his fault; Escad had made rash, emotional choices that had dumped him in this situation.

Ariesa, was another matter. She was absolutely right, she had been manipulated, used, her own naïveté making it almost altogether too easy. He was grateful Drakonis had no further need for her; he did not want her to be a pawn any longer. Like he himself was.

He approached the girl – it really was what she was, only barely a woman – who sat on a rock alone, disconsolate. Her head hung down, and her sword leaned against her knees.

She raised her eyes to him. There was no hatred; she was far too emotionally exhausted for that, and her face looked merely drained and expressionless. She did not say anything - come to think of it, she hadn't said much for the last couple of days.

"Your duty is fulfilled," he began. "You need not stay with me any longer." Those eyes flickered slightly, and Larc leaned in ever so slightly. "I'm sorry," he said in the barest trace of a whisper. Her head turning slightly away from him was his only acknowledgement.

As if he didn't feel low enough already. He did not want to see Sierra's disapproval on top of it all, so he turned and strode out of the clearing without a backwards glance, beginning what he hoped would be his final return to the Underworld.

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The elven children – _her apprentices_, Pearl had said? – had greeted her eagerly, running to hug her as soon as Larc had left. The others had all rushed to rejoin them, even the Empire's Knight – Thoma?, she thought - was being greeted with open arms - though so far, Daena and Pearl were the only ones who would approach Escad. Nevertheless, Vadise's clearing had descended into a round of joyous reunions.

Except for one. The Jumi Knight stood off to the side, remaining aloof. Elazul seemed to be looking at nothing and everything at the same point, and everything about his manner separated him from the others' happiness.

Sierra had no desire to be a part of their intimacy at the moment, nor did she wish to interrupt. Pensively, she left them to their own devices, and went to join her dragon.

Vadise was curled on far side of the base of the ancient tree, the place where she found the most comfort. The tree here shielded the Stone, and the faded light danced over the dragon's features. She opened her eye at her dragoon's approach. "You should be with them, not me. You will have to make plans; you must leave me to go with them, now."

Sierra felt a knot in her stomach. "Vadise," she began, "I am worried about you, with the Stone weakened such." She stole a glance at the faint light it was emitting.

"I will be alright, Sierra," the dragon answered wearily. "I have other needs for you right now. You must save Larc and Ariesa..."

"Save Ariesa?" she asked, startled. "From what? Larc released her, surely Drakonis's hold on her cannot be that strong."

"He has freed her from this particular agreement with him, but not from the Underworld, and its contracts." Vadise shivered slightly. "There is more. It is not just Drakonis I fear, but the many malevolent forces around. It is said the true Mana Stone is found in the Sanctuary of Mana, though I know not where that Sanctuary could be found. I am hoping she will be able to make it there, and do not want Drakonis to be able to get his claws into her if she does."

"Her? You think?" she asked in surprise.

Vadise looked at her dragoon with an expression that clearly showed she did not care to explain, and Sierra knew not to press. "You cannot see the same things I see. She has more strength than she knows, but she does not yet know how to use it. You can protect her, and perhaps guide her as well. It does not seem there is anyone else around her who can."

"The Jumi…" Sierra asked.

"Is far too young. I am surprised to see him with a guardian at all. And he has his own burden, I think," Vadise said with a note of finality.

_The core_. She remembered now. Sierra paused to let it all sink in, and quiet settled over the small clearing.

"Hello?" said a female voice, interrupting her thoughts.

"Come closer," welcomed Vadise, and Ariesa stepped into the home of the Mana Stone hesitantly.

"I have… a question," she murmured awkwardly. Sierra did not leave, but made herself a little more scarce, stepping back to be partly concealed by the foliage, leaving Vadise with Ariesa, though fully within her hearing.

"I have to know…" Ariesa began worriedly, "…why me?"

Vadise paused. "I have been thinking on this a bit," she replied, speaking gently to the agitated young woman. "You have a… shall we say, a _balance_ to you? That might not be the right word, but the point is the same. A dragoon gives Drakonis a link, however tenuous, to the overworld; Larc perhaps could have drawn off Escad enough to return to the surface; the knight has more connection to Mana than he wishes to acknowledge. But Escad is still far too one-sided, and I doubt that Drakonis could not have gotten to the stones without you to clear entry."

"Entry? But I thought he just released them…"

"It is not so easy, my child. The stones resist, as does the Sword, to those they do not wish near them. It takes a tremendous amount of power to do so. It once took the sacrifice of a human life." Ariesa visibly flinched. "The fact that they do not have the Goddess's strength holding them together necessitated a different approach, one Drakonis has found and exploited."

The girl looked down at the ground. Vadise felt sorry for her, she was so young, not in years, but in experience. "I am sorry you have been dragged into this," the dragon told her gently, "but there is always a way out."

"How?" Ariesa demanded.

"You will have to worry about that soon enough. For now, rest, and find yourself some peace in your soul. Find someone who will give you comfort."

----------------------------------------

Ariesa took Vadise's words to heart, and found her footsteps leading her to Elazul, but as she approached him, he stiffened slightly even before he could see her.

She stopped nervously. She realized she didn't know what to say, what was wrong. "Elazul…" she began. She had no idea what to say, where to begin or what was most wrong.

He turned to face her, and he looked at her like he was looking at a stranger. "There's something different about you," he told her carefully.

"What do you mean?" she asked cautiously. He was _right_ though, she knew. Something had been lost, and she didn't think it could be found again.

He stepped very close to her, so close that she could feel the warmth of his body. "It's something… here." He touched her collarbone, approximately where a core would be if she had one, and traced down a couple inches towards where her heart was. "I… don't know how else to say it." He pulled his hand back, and she no longer had even that fingertip of his touch.

"I thought you were stronger," he finished quietly.

"Elazul…" she said his name again, reaching for his arm, but he tugged it away.

"Not now. I can't talk about it." He strode away, leaving her standing at a loss for words, alone.


	39. Secrets: Holiness

**Author's Note: **Welcome… to the LONGEST single posting I have ever put up.

I actually did… an enormous amount of work for this over just the last couple of days. Does that mean I'm just slapping up a bunch of last minute work? Not at all! Those who know me, know that would be a very un-Meeerf thing to do.

I've just been grabbed… by an ENORMOUS amount of creative energy. Or maybe I'm delirious from lack of sleep. Or maybe just giddy because I actually GOT some decent sleep last night. It doesn't matter. These chapters came out SUPER AWESOME.

YELLING in ALL CAPS is FUN!

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**39. Secrets: Holiness**

When he was with Matilda, he forgot about everything else.

The rest of the time, Escad was angry, and frustrated. He was a Holy Knight, descended from Julio Liotte, who had been named by Ricrot himself. His weapon was the sword, a holy weapon, and he fought for the Light.

And he was jealous of a demon.

He had been back in Gato for nearly a year, after having spent two years fighting the empire. Border skirmishes, only; Gato hardly had the manpower to stand up to a full-frontal assault. If the Jumi City couldn't stand up to the Empire, the Holy City wouldn't have a chance. But it was his required training, and it was a gesture, a gesture that gave him pride in doing something at the same time that it only filled him with hate for how weak his homeland really was.

But that was in the past. Here, in Gato, it was peaceful, and he could spend hours just looking into her hazel eyes, wondering if they were more green or brown.

Matilda was intelligent and spirited, but kind… too kind, he thought. It would be her undoing. She had this fundamental idea of the gentleness and goodness of the world. Admirable, certainly, but impossibly naïve as well. He had learned, he had seen, in the Empire, all the ugliness that could happen, and he knew. Holiness or not, it was kill or be killed, that was all there was to it.

He didn't tell her these things, of course. Time with her alone was too precious, without anyone else, especially without Irwin.

Irwin had been… a friend, demon or not. But that had been before adulthood had hit, and with it all the cravings. He couldn't say when it began, but at some point… both had started to see Matilda differently, and each other because of it, eyeing each other with a suspicion that their lost innocence left behind. And with him away, Matilda had only the demon to turn to, putting Escad at a competitive disadvantage. He was surprised that he now saw her as a prize to be won, but something about Irwin, and the way Matilda was when they were together, made it so.

He knew what it was really all about. The girls in Gato had taught him plenty of things, as soon as he realized they were looking at him, but Matilda was something different.

Escad contemplated this as they sat together by the Mekiv waterfall. Matilda went here when she said she wanted to see the fairies; Escad could never see them himself. It did not matter; he loved to watch her by the falls, that expression of pronounced peace and contentment crossing her face. He felt privileged to be here with her in this moment, and he found himself wanting to say something, anything, to bring them closer together.

"I want to protect you," was what burst out of his mouth.

"Of course you do," Matilda replied in her high, lilting voice, as delicate as that doll's face. "That's what the Liotte family has done for generations. I would expect nothing else."

She spoke with pride in him, in his heritage, but, he realized, she really didn't get it. He leaned in to kiss her, receiving a few gentle kisses in return before she pulled away once again.

"More than that," he told her. "Not just the priestess, but _you_, Matilda, from all the ugliness of the world that you shouldn't have to know about. From evil, monsters, demons…" he stopped short realizing what he had just said, and her response.

She hung her head, those wide eyes dropping towards the ground. "Demons…" she began. "The say priestesses can't be friends with demons. How is it, the was our society is today, so tolerant of some things, and so backwards on others?"

"I think they don't know what might come out of a demon heritage," Escad said cautiously.

"This isn't about that at all," Matilda protested reasonably. "It's about you, about who you want to be, and what you want." Her eyes flickered towards his for a moment in a way that made him catch his breath.

Escad stopped short. He couldn't really argue with her when in fact… she was dead-on.

"Do you miss our childhood?" he said, abruptly changing the subject.

"No," Matilda replied. "Or yes. I miss some things, the possibilities, but I can only hope new chances will open up for us." She looked away for a moment. "I can only hope we will not find ourselves trapped."

He knew exactly how she felt. "I feel like we've lost much, and gained so little," he said glumly. "Always having to prove ourselves now…"

"Daena is not so disillusioned yet," Matilda told him.

"She's only about to turn fourteen," Escad replied. "She hasn't had her chance."

"You think so?" There was a rare sense of challenge in Matilda's eyes. "I don't think it's so simple. She has an idealism, a hope…" Matilda paused. "It's something… I wish I could find in myself. That passion."

"It sounds like she's going to be very disappointed by life," Escad replied. Matilda flinched, as if hurt by his negativity, and he immediately regretted bringing her any sort of pain.

_He had been disappointed plenty by life already_, he thought. But for the moment, life did not come up short, he thought as he pulled Matilda close to him.

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Rubens was surprised when he stumbled into the empty dreamweaving room, to find it was not so empty. Conventionally, Matilda would not take over until she was seventeen, and until then, the dreamweaving room was just another chamber like any other, though few chose to enter.

Today, though, someone had.

Irwin stood there, looking at the two torches, their twin flames flickering as they always had and always would. "What brings you here?" Rubens asked conversationally. Unlike many, he had little fear of the young man of unknown origin, who had appeared in their town ten years before, though many called him a demon.

"I feel… lost," Irwin began, his voice having that vague growling edge to it. "Like these torches, separate, but together at the same time." There was a look in his eyes that a male of any species easily recognized.

Rubens realized that Irwin was talking about… _girl problems_, bizarre though that might seem. It struck a nerve in the Jumi, and he realized how long it had been since he had allowed himself to even think Diana's name.

He had to push her to the back of his mind, bury her memory so he himself could survive and move on. Now, seeing the young man's expression, he remembered the feelings he once had all over again. Diana was long gone, but love could still be there for others.

Impulsively, he reached in his pocket, for the item that never left, the part he always kept with him. He had hung onto the silly trinket for so long, contemplating throwing it away more than once. It was time to let it go.

Rubens dangled the brooch in midair, an elegantly carved piece filled with remnants of gemstones from Etansel itself. "You have someone you want to give this to?" he asked. Irwin nodded.

His decision was made, but he still handed over the brooch reluctantly, pushing down Diana's name and memory along with it. It was better to give it away, let it have some life again. The thing, like all stones that had been in contact with the Jumi in their city, had some power of Mana, power of love.

Irwin clasped it in dual hands greedily, eyes lighting up, no doubt in recognition of what it was. Jealousy splashed through the other emotions, and idly Rubens wondered who was going to receive the gift.

It made Rubens wish he could be a young man all over again, full of love and hope and ideas. But that was lost in hundreds of years of time and tragedy, as many of the Jumi's memories were. "Love conquers all," he said to himself once Irwin had left. "Such a naïve sentiment. He will find out soon enough."

Hardening himself once more, he turned back to the torches.

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Matilda's seventeenth birthday was creeping up, the day Escad had been dreading.

He barely saw her anymore; she was always engrossed in some sort of activity, learning sermons, getting robes fitted, whatever ridiculities the temple saw fit to bother her with. They had been without a priestess for a while, waiting anxiously for her to hit the age at which she could ascend. And Escad had been dreading it just as much.

The only real gratification was that Irwin saw her just as rarely.

Irwin's demon heritage had never bothered him as a child. Actually, he had never even received a clear answer on how demon heritage came about, or what he was doing in Gato, but in that way that children do, he had never worried about it.

Since he had returned to Gato, he had neatly avoided Irwin. And Irwin had hardly sought him out. They had exchanged a bare handful of words, and those in public situations, polite frivolities.

Still, it weighed on him every night, as it did this night.

He heard a sound, in his rooms, high in the Gato Temple. Instinct sent his two hands towards his broadsword, every nerve on edge, until he heard a tremulous voice. "Escad? Are you up?"

He set the sword down gently. Too much to hope for that Matilda hadn't heard him pick it up; but now she approached his bed.

She seemed nervous. "What is it?' he asked her gently. He noted a new piece of jewelry pinned to her clothes. An odd brooch, probably more Temple nonsense.

Matilda breathed heavily, anxiously, for a minute. Escad had not lit a candle or a lamp, but his eyes had now adjusted enough to the dark that he could see her clearly. "Escad…" she finally began. "I'm leaving. Tonight."

That sat him bolt upright. "Where? What? Why?" And then a sinking feeling. "With who?"

Matilda didn't seem to know what to answer first, plopping herself on the bed morosely. "I can't do it, I can't, Escad!" she whispered plaintively. "The priestess… she belongs to Gato, to the Goddess, to the world. I… I don't think I can belong to anyone," she finished in a rush.

Escad felt his heart grow heavy. "So what is the other option?"

"To go away," she said quietly, in the tone of someone telling a very serious secret.

He sat bolt upright. "Then let me take you away myself."

She pushed him down. "No…" she whispered. "Please don't, I'm begging you. You have your obligations here. There will be another abbess, you will have to protect her."

"Don't go," he told her, but she just shook her head. He knew she had decided.

"Then," he suggested with trepidation, "Don't go tonight. Give me something to remember you by… and then I promise I will let you go."

He reached for her, and she leaned in closer.

------------------------------------

Daena was upset, to put it mildly. Not like the whole temple wasn't in an uproar to begin with.

She wished she could be more useful. She was months away from even her fifteenth birthday, and the age of majority was seventeen, as much as she was ready to fulfill her destiny and become a defender of the temple _now_.

But instead, she found herself going to Escad.

Escad was still in bed, the lazy bum, and she shook him with all her strength. Which was not insubstantial, considering her training. A grunt finally escaped the blankets. "Escad! Wake up! Matilda's gone!" she berated him.

She had some inkling of what Escad felt for Matilda, and she was surprised he didn't leap out of the bed at that news. Instead she got a noncommittal, "Relax, Daena."

A suspicion crossed her mind. "You know something."

"Whatever gave you that idea?" he said, his head finally emerging from the blankets. She couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not, but it made her angry either way.

"Don't patronize me!" she cried. "My big sister is gone, and you should be out there looking for her! And if you're not, there's a reason why, and you won't tell me!" In anger, she tore the covers off, leaving Escad exposed in nothing but his smallclothes.

That got his attention. He sat up, groggily, grabbing at a corner of the blanket to achieve some sort of coverage for his bottom half, his bare chest still exposed.

Daena felt herself blush, wondering if he always slept nearly naked like that. "I mean, Irwin will be there to help her, but…" she said, a little flustered.

"Irwin?" Surprise crossed Escad's face.

"You didn't know that part?" Daena asked, a bit smugly.

By way of answer, Escad jumped out of bed and began pulling on clothes, Daena's presence notwithstanding. "That demon," he muttered. "I'll kill him."

Daena watched him working himself up into a fervor. "Escad…" Matilda had always confided her deepest feelings to Daena, and now… she did not know where to start, how to tell Escad how Matilda felt for Irwin, how to tell him what she felt in return. He wouldn't hear it, but she had to try. "Escad, she lov-"

Escad wheeled on her. "Don't," he told her. "Finish. That. Sentence."

"You think you can make it go away?" she sneered. "You're even more thoughtless and impulsive than I thought."

"I _can_ make it go away," Escad told her. "And I will." With that, he stalked out of the room.

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They were easy enough to trail, though it took some days; they had fled a long way from Gato, all the way into the no-man's land that bordered the empire. He barely noticed the path he followed, engrossed in his own thoughts. _Irwin_. The name he had not wanted to hear.

Finally he found himself entering the Ulkan Mines, long since abandoned since the enslaved dwarves of the empire had dug it dry. Now, they were only a dark underground home to monsters and persons that didn't want to be found.

It wasn't surprising that Irwin had gone there.

He fought his way down, carelessly obliterating monsters with forceful swings of his heavy broadsword, following the path that led ever deeper into the earth. Noxious gases filled the air, but he ignored his own coughing and sputtering, figuring that meant he was that much closer to his goal.

It was a shriek that finally caught his ear, and he went tearing across the cavern to find the source.

Sure enough, there was Matilda, crumpled on the ground, chest heaving, and he ran to her. She seemed unhurt, but there was something subtly different about her - something he couldn't put his finger on, but it didn't seem to be good.

"What did he do?" Escad demanded angrily, reaching a hand to her, and as she clasped it back, he used all his strength to pull her to her feet once again.

Matilda looked at him through tear-stained eyes. "He is gone, Escad. So is my chance to leave. All I can do now is go back to Gato and become the abbess after all." Her voice was haunted, resigned.

Escad placed one arm around her as they began the long trek back up. En route, he realized to his dismay that he could not remember the way back up, and though time could not be told deep within the earth, he suspected it was several days that they wandered those caverns, trying to find their way out.

Matilda said little over that time, and he slept less, allowing her to curl against him when she said she was tired, while he dozed fitfully over worry of what might be around them. He had foolishly brought little in the way of rations, but he gave them all to her, brushing off her concerns for him and stoically ignoring the hunger inside himself. When he did manage to get some rest, he found himself tormented by dreams of being trapped there forever, his fears for her far more frightening than his concern for himself.

Finally, they saw sunlight, and only sheer exhaustion kept them from breaking into a run.

As they approached the cave's opening, familiar voices reached his ears. The two of them burst out into the light of midday to be met by a cadre of Gato's temple warriors, led by Daena, somehow radiating command despite her fourteen years.

"You followed after all," he said to her, not sure if he was accusing her or just making an observation.

"Did you expect anything less?" she said, striding over to Matilda. It had been only in the last year or so that she had slowly but surely begun to outgrow the woman she called her "big sister", and now she pulled Matilda to her like that sister in truth, Matilda weeping into her clothes.

"Take her back," Escad commanded.

"You?" Daena asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.

He ignored her, and Matilda pulled away from Daena. Escad placed one hand gently on her shoulder, drawing her aside with him for a moment, the other Gatoans stepping back to leave a respectful distance.

He had a million things he could have said to her in that moment. But looking into her red-rimmed eyes, he realized there was only one word he had left for her.

"Goodbye," he whispered, leaning in close. "If I don't come back…" _It's because I'm dead_, was what he could not bring himself to say, _because nothing less would keep me from you_.

Matilda only smiled then to show she understood, softly, an expression that told him more than anything she could have said. It was enough. He turned hastily away from her and ran back into the mines, ignoring the shouted protests of Daena and the other people of Gato.

Escad ran until the echoes of their voices could no longer be heard. He had no way of knowing if Irwin was still there, if the demon could be found, but it was perhaps pure instinct that kept him going, back down to the deepest cavern where he had found Matilda.

Pulling to a halt, he stood in that dark place beneath the earth, no sound to be heard but his own breathing, and he began to doubt himself. "This was a stupid idea," he said to the cavern. "Why would I think that I could find Irwin here?"

"Because anyplace can be a door to the Underworld, if only it is deep enough," boomed a familiar voice. Escad turned to see his target, marching casually towards him.

"What have you done to her?" Escad railed, whipping out three feet of heavy sword before him.

Irwin smirked with a devilish expression, and Escad felt nothing but hate. He tried to control his emotions, tried to remember growing up with the guy, but to no avail. All he could think about was Matilda, the way she had looked at him, the way she had _felt_ against him…

"Why, I just gave her what she really wanted." Irwin pulled out a bottle. "You see this?"

"What the hell is that?" Escad asked. "Some meaningless object?"

"On the contrary," Irwin replied. "It is the source of Matilda's powers. I merely took them from her so they cannot place the demands on her they would otherwise."

Escad was stunned. "You think that will help her?"

"You remember, you always used to tease Matilda for being able to see fairies? Perhaps you should have had a little more faith, Holy Knight," he said mockingly. His eyes narrowed even more deviously. "Then again, if you had a little more faith in her, perhaps she would have fled with you instead."

That plunged him into an absolute fury, and his sword was slicing through the air before he knew it. But before it could connect, he found himself flung backwards against the wall with incredible force. He stood, and shook himself off, to see Irwin laughing, a demonic cackle that chilled him to the bone.

"You are too weak still," he said. "You have much to learn. Perhaps the warrior Wisdom Olbohn could help you some."

"He resides in the Underworld, and I'm not dead," Escad protested.

"No need to die. Much more interesting to keep you alive." Escad shifted, but Irwin merely raised one clawed hand, and the bottle off to the side began to glow. Escad suddenly felt himself _falling_, falling far from the mines, and only Irwin's voice followed him down.

"To the bottom of the Underworld with you…"

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Matilda reclined on the soft bed that awaited her in the dreamweaving room.

The sheets were the softest Sultan silk, and the pillows were filled with rare, downy feathers. It was intended for the priestess to meditate as the stained-glass windows above reflected and refracted the daylight, or to ponder the two torches during the night, the torches that always kept her company.

"He has not been found, Matilda, and every possible cavern of the mines was searched," Daena told her reluctantly. "I don't want to say it, but…"

"You are my little sister," Matilda told her gently. "There are no secrets between us."

Daena looked anguished. "They say… they say he is most likely dead." She was just on the edge of crying, and holding it in with all of her effort. "We should have never let him go after Irwin… but I thought, we all grew up together…"

"They say. They do not know." Matilda found her own response startlingly nonchalant. "Myself, I doubt it, but in any case, Escad is holy enough to survive the Underworld."

She felt pain cross her face, and Daena, always sensitive to her moods, rose from her seat. "I will leave you now, Abbess. _Matilda_," she corrected herself back from the formal address.

Matilda sank into her pillows with surprising weariness after Daena left. Suddenly, she felt incredibly hateful towards those pillows, wondering why she should be in comfort while her friends suffered.

She tore them to pieces, ripping them apart with all her strength, sending feathers flying across the room. Minutes later, she noticed all the pillows were destroyed, and turned her attention to the sheets. The expensive silk was much more fragile, tearing through in incredibly gratifying lines, she reducing it to smaller and smaller pieces until finally, with a violent shove, she sent all the finery tumbling to the floor.

All that remained was the stone bier that lay beneath. Silently, she curled up on its hard, smooth surface. At last, she could rest.

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Escad lay on the ground, slowly getting his wind back from the fall that had slammed him against the warm earth. He rose carefully, testing bones one by one. None seemed to be broken.

"Hello, newly-dead!" shrieked a chorus of off-key voices.

"Where am I? Heaven's gate?" Escad asked, turning his attention to his surroundings.

"No such luck! Welcome to the Underworld," said a voice. "Your own failure brought you here!" The voice resolved itself into a wispy, candy-pink spirit, whose only notable feature was grotesquely large and bulbous eyes.

"Shadoles," Escad said, realization hitting him. _The Underworld_, Irwin had said, and he could not think of anything else this place might be. Red walls, hot to the touch, and a floor that seemed to glow whenever he looked at it – this was it, alright.

"That's right! Too bad you couldn't see fairies," one Shadole mocked. "Now you get their shadows instead!"

"Quiet, Shadoles. This one is not dead," another voice, deep and dignified, responded.

At least _that_ was good news, but as Escad turned towards the voice, he thought he must be dreaming instead. The – man? – before him had a head shaped like an onion, a dozen eyes peering in all directions, at least three of which were currently focused on him. He appeared to have at least one pair of extra arms, and a white robe covered Goddess-only-knows whatever malformations the rest of his body bore.

"You doubt me," the onion said, and Escad started, wondering how he had let his thoughts show so easily across his face. "It is easy enough to tell when one is a Wisdom."

Escad responded with shock. "_Olbohn_?" he asked.

"Indeed," the Wisdom responded. "I was advised as to what transpired. I have decided to make you my apprentice."

Escad shook his head slightly to clear it. "Now wait a minute," he said, wondering what the hell was going on. So to speak. "It wasn't my idea to come down here in the first place. How about you just find a way to get me out of here instead, and we forget this ever happened?"

"You would leave so easily?" Olbohn questioned. "After all the opportunity that awaits you down here? The training you could receive, the power to destroy Irwin. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

The onion's eyes pierced his, as if reading his soul. Escad shifted uncomfortably.

"Besides," Olbohn continued, leaning forward now with all of those eyes focusing on his guest. "Now that you're here, I have to give you permission to leave. Normally, I send the living away as quickly as I can, but in this case… I don't know if I'm inclined to grant it."

"You…" Escad was left without an answer.

"I see much about you, young man." One of Olbohn's arms pointed a finger sharply at him. "You think you want to help someone, you think you are a holy knight, but really, you only want to be a hero. You think only of yourself."

"I want to destroy a demon. What could be more holy than that?"

"Irwin?" Olbohn asked mildly. "That's who you refer to, correct?"

"Why? Are you saying he's not a demon?" Escad challenged.

Olbohn's face clouded. "I cannot say I have much loyalty to Irwin, but things are not always as simple as they seem." He motioned a couple of arms to the walls around him. "Do you even know why you are able to be in the Underworld?" Escad shook his head truthfully no. "It is not the same as it once was, not the home of the demons as it once was. The Underworld itself has power, and demons were only one expression of that power. Now, it is only chaos."

"They're the same thing," Escad protested stubbornly.

"So you say foolishly to one with centuries of knowledge. You do not understand these fine distinctions, and that will be your undoing. Chaos, in a form, what most call darkness, is there to balance light, holiness. You understand little of Mana. How far do you think you will get without that, Holy Knight?"

Escad tapped his foot impatiently, not bothering to hide the doubt across his face.

Olbohn paused. "Perhaps one more detail would interest you. Irwin can now be found in the land of the fairies. How do you expect to travel _there_?"

"_Fairies_?" Escad shouted, hands balling into fists angrily. "Matilda counted on them for her power, and now they help _Irwin_?! I'll go destroy them myself! Let me out of here!"

Olbohn finally threw up his hands. "You can leave if you really wish," he said, "but will you now that you know what is at stake?"

Escad cringed slightly under that gaze, knowing that Olbohn was right. He had no chance on his own. Finally, he answered, gritting his teeth. "I'll stay," he forced out.

"You'll stay?" Olbohn asked mildly. "To be my apprentice, for as long as I decide?"

"Yes," Escad practically spat.

"Not enough. Repeat after me… To be my apprentice…"

Escad barely heard himself as he repeated the litany the Wisdom intoned, to become Olbohn's apprentice - or slave, as he saw it. He thought of Matilda, and it soothed him some, to remember what he was making this sacrifice for. She sprang sharply to his mind, the touch of her, only a handful of nights ago.

"Very well," Olbohn agreed. "You are accepted. Now, to make things official, it is time for the baptism of flame."

Escad kept his mouth firmly shut, figuring that would throw Olbohn far more off guard that actually pestering him with the questions that begged. "Baptism!" squealed the Shadoles, annoying him immensely, as Olbohn led him through twisting, hot, humid caverns.

"Ignore them," Olbohn ordered. "They are just thoughts, as are the sproutlings. They have no power."

"You just think you run the place, but you don't do a thing!" one said with high-pitched contempt. Escad swatted it, feeling a rush a pleasure when it whizzed off in the darkness.

The knight first felt real trepidation when he entered a room at the center of which appeared to be a basin of pure flame, and he wondered really what such a baptism entailed.

Olbohn saved him the trouble of asking. "You wonder what it is," he intoned. "It is necessary, if you are to be a part of the Underworld for long. The Underworld will sense you otherwise, and it will not open to you. It fears you may do damage to it – it, and those who live within it."

Escad still looked at the basin dubiously. "Is it going to kill me?"

"No," Olbohn told him plainly. "The principle is the same for the living or dead. It makes you something of a half-spirit. What makes the difference is where you go from here. The dead often choose to cling in that intermediate form, instead of fading away fully. The living take that form to wander the halls of the Underworld, but may return to themselves again. It merely keeps them on, shall we say, good behavior, while they are here, and avoids the living becoming murderous towards… certain denizens."

Escad shrugged, and a Shadole emerged from the walls to pour flames over him, gritting his teeth against the pain that hit him even before the second thoughts did.

------------------------------------

_Amazing how a place called the Underworld could become so familiar in such a short time_, thought Escad with a bit of sarcasm. He had accommodated to his new master, even to his solitude, and Olbohn was a good teacher, but the whole situation still made him rankle with resentment.

Olbohn challenged him daily with exercises, never once allowing a true fight, to which Escad complained bitterly. "What, am I not good enough?"

"To do that, you would have to face my true sword," Olbohn told him. One arm reached back, and an enormous weapon appeared, a gigantic two-handed blade that drew Escad with its sheer power.

"It is not only raw power. It is the Mana in it," Olbohn told him, noticing the fascination on his apprentice's face. "Run through with threads of Altena Alloy."

Escad shrank back. "I want nothing to do with Mana, or any sort of fairy craftsmanship. The fairies are evil troublemakers."

"I cannot say I have much love for the fairies," Olbohn told him mildly. "But you still fail to understand the purpose they might serve."

"They serve Irwin, and he is evil for sure."

"Perhaps," agreed Olbohn. "But evil has its role too. Everything is in balance in the way of Mana."

"How can that be, when there is so much suffering because of it? How can that be the will of Mana?" Escad asked. Olbohn was suggesting that everything Matilda had suffered was correct and right, and that was a thought he could not stomach. Mana was what had stolen Matilda from him.

"But do you hate Mana so?" Olbohn inquired. "You do not yet understand the ways you yourself are connected to it." He snapped his fingers, and there appeared another two-handed sword, shaped much like his own but the metal shining brightly even in the dim light of the Underworld.

Escad found himself _drawn_ to the sword, wanting it. Olbohn did not fail to notice. "It is made of Lorant silver. The purity of the Amazons is inside it." Escad reached for it, but Olbohn snatched it abruptly back, making it disappear once again. "Not yet, I think. I will give it to you when you leave. By then, I hope you will be able to accept the part of yourself that cries out for Mana, accept all the parts of the Goddess; or else, you will not be ready for it even then."

Escad hungered for that sword, and that kept him going, for – months? Years? He found his own sense of time changing, losing track of days turning in favor of a sense of continuity and persistence.

He trained with Olbohn, wanting always to get stronger, fight harder; but Olbohn seemed to restrain him, holding him back. It made Escad quite annoyed, and restless, and an itch drove him to prowl the Underworld caverns whenever he could get away.

He had been aimlessly wandering in that way – though when you came right down to it, every passageway in the Underworld was aimless – when another figure approached him, one he had not seen before.

Escad pulled his sword, at the last second remembering he was not allowed to fight denizens of the Underworld. Fortunately, the stranger, now obvious to him as a beast-man, seemed rather nonplussed by his aggressive gesture.

"What are you doing here?" the other man asked, not angry, just seeking information.

It made it difficult for Escad to retort aggressively, but he had no plans to spill out the full story. "Studying with Olbohn," he said curtly.

"Ah. So it is you." Responding to Escad's unspoken question, he continued. "You think I haven't heard of you? I am Larc, dragoon to Drakonis, who guards the lake of fire at the bottom of the Underworld."

_Dragoon_, Escad muttered silently, remembering some things he had heard from the Empire soldiers. Something like the Jumi and their knight-and-guardian setup, but a little more one-sided, the dragoon ultimately at the mercy of the dragon's will. "You're his servant, is what you mean."

Larc's face clouded. "True, you are freer than I am."

"It's hardly freedom," Escad protested, a bit miffed.

"Oh?" Larc asked. "You had a choice. I didn't. Why did you agree then?"

_Why, indeed_? He had been asking himself that same question lately. Olbohn was a master swordsman, to be certain; but at this point, that reason carried little weight within himself. The Wisdom spent more time filling is head with philosophy than teaching him how to wield a sword.

And now he was stuck.

"How do we get out of this?" Escad asked, ignoring Larc's question. He needed Olbohn's permission to leave; the same baptism that had allowed him to be Olbohn's apprentice, held him in the Underworld, castrated him. It opened up the Underworld and trapped him at the same time.

"Is that all you want?" Larc asked mildly. "To leave the Underworld?"

"No!" Escad cried. "I want more power, more strength, to beat that demon…" He cut his own words off quickly, before he lost his temper completely.

Larc barely seemed to notice. "Good. You may want to keep that in mind while negotiating. Come," he said, not bothering to see if Escad followed.

Escad was surprised to find himself following behind Larc. Moreover, he was amazed that he wasn't questioning anything. "Are you afraid?" Larc asked suddenly.

"This isn't half as dangerous as the Empire," Escad grumbled.

For the first time, Larc looked startled. "The Empire. They tried for the Stones as well." Escad gave him a blank look, having absolutely no idea what he was talking about. "You know the bone fortress?"

"Never been. Heard it's a pretty intimidating place."

"I wonder, is it the dragon, or his dragoon makes it so?" Larc asked mildly, then abruptly changed tone as if he had changed his mind about saying something. "I don't fear it half as much as the Flames."

"What flames?" Escad asked, looking around. There were flames everywhere.

Larc ignored him. "Sometimes, you have to side with your nemesis. Remember that," he said cryptically, leaving Escad thoroughly confused. "Drakonis guards a Stone, himself, you realize," the other man continued. "Deathbringer knew better than to search for that one. He would have no chance down here. But Drakonis is learning to use his Stone."

That made Escad profoundly uncomfortable. The whispers of Drakonis's name he had picked up throughout the Underworld, and the bare bits of information from Olbohn, made him think that the dragon of flame was truly more dangerous than the Empire that Escad had once fought against. _Enemies on all sides_, he thought.

"You do know that was the Empire's goal?" Larc asked, nearly echoing his thoughts. "That is part of the reason that Deathbringer became Jajara's dragoon, to keep an eye on him. Only dragons are powerful enough to guard Mana Stones."

"I didn't know the dragons guarded any Stones," Escad said truthfully. Or that there were any Mana Stones at all. "How do they get away with that? Mana is meant for everyone," he said, some of the lessons of his Gato upbringing surging upwards. "What are _dragons_ doing hoarding it?"

"That is what we are trying to stop. You will get out of here earlier than I will," Larc predicted. "My master is not so ready to have me leave."

"But Olbohn's the block," Escad grumbled.

"Drakonis will work that out," Larc answered evenly.

That was all the time for conversation they had, as Escad found himself following Larc into an enormous chamber somewhere in the depths of the Underworld that looked exactly like, as Larc had said, a lake of flame. The temperature rose some not-insubstantial number of degrees as he entered.

He had expected some sort of fire-breathing red dragon to emerge out of it all, but instead he was greeted by a short, nondescript man, unremarkable in every way despite his red hair and attire.

"Greetings," the man said. "Any friend of Larc's is a friend of mine. Tell me, what brings you to the pulpit of eternal flame?"

"I want more strength," Escad blurted out. "I want to beat that demon."

Drakonis smiled. "I don't particularly care for demons myself. I was rather glad when they left the Underworld. So, seeing that we have certain interests in common, perhaps then we can make… a deal…" he said.

"What do you want from me?" Escad asked warily.

"Simple. Your help in reaching the other Stones."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, no, not you, certainly. You are far to imbalanced to open a stone yourself, it would hide from you." Escad didn't know whether to be insulted or not. "But you want power, do you not?" Drakonis motioned out over the sea of flames, and from within, rose an enormous red jewel, the size of a man, glowing angrily. "I can give you the power you desire, and all I ask in return is that you help find what I need."

"Which is?" Escad found his eyes pulled to that red Stone, and knew it was exactly what Drakonis said it was.

"I need… someone," Drakonis told him. "A powerful warrior. A hero, a heroine."

"That's specific," replied Escad.

"You do not need to know more," Drakonis replied curtly. "You will know who you are looking for when you find them. Larc cannot leave to do so himself, as he is dead, or close enough." Escad looked at Larc, startled. "But you are still living. With Olbohn's permission, I will give you what you seek, and you will find what I seek."

Drakonis's smile grew slightly twisted. "Think well on this. A bargain with the Underworld cannot be broken until it is completed, or one is released. Olbohn has taught you this well enough."

Escad felt anger rise. Olbohn had certainly trapped him well enough, and largely reneged on his promise to give him strength. "What will you do?"

"You have some sense of Mana, whether you like it or not, and the baptism you endured has begun to open it up. That part of yourself that you deny… I will.. enhance... it in a way that will help you in the way that I need. You will not be able to leave the Underworld for a few years yet, but it will settle, and sharpen. You want that, don't you, reaching for it a little more all the time?"

Escad thought of the Lorant silver sword once again, and had to admit it was true. "Still… Mana…Sounds like who you are looking for is a Jumi," he told Drakonis.

Drakonis considered. "Jumi are… complicated… when they get near Mana Stones," he finally replied. "I don't know that it the best option. They have a dangerous… synergy with it that I cannot permit in my domain, near my stone or any of the others. It would damage my objectives."

Even as Drakonis spoke to him, Escad felt a slow trickle of power, of Mana, traveling to him from the dragon. It filled him - not just physical strength, but a sort of inner sense, hidden anger and determination flaring to life once again. He wondered if he was making the right choice, but quickly ignored the sentiment.

Whatever it took. He only wanted to get out.

------------------------------------

Larc watched Escad leave with a heavy heart, resenting once again his position, his mind stewing through the myriad of ways he was contemplating to escape his imprisonment, cursing Jajara one again for sheltering his sworn enemy and dooming him to this slavery.

"You did not tell him the whole truth," Larc accused.

"Would you tell him he is mine now, that I hold him more tightly than Olbohn ever did?" Drakonis asked mildly. "Would he have agreed, with that knowledge? He fights against Olbohn's teachings when he should be listening."

"He received his desire not knowing it was tainted."

"Every desire is tainted. Like you wanting to see your sister again? Look where it got you." Drakonis taunted. "You can thank Jajara for that. Seems to me Deathbringer would have been a better dragoon for me anyway, we share many of the same goals."

Drakonis's laughter echoed across the lake of flame, and Larc shut his eyes to tune out the insults.


	40. Legends: Flames

**40. Legends: Flames**

Sierra was worried about the girl. Ariesa remained disconsolate, despite the others' best efforts. Or maybe she was just numb.

She had warned Ariesa that she would gain wisdom the hard way. The girl's intentions may have been good, but that didn't change the facts of what one had to deal with, what she had done; Sierra had learned that a time or two herself.

She had tried to talk to the Jumi Knight, too, after Vadise had given her the barest sketch of how Ariesa had become involved with it all.

Elazul didn't seem to want to hear it, except for one part. "Will the Stone really help Pearl?" he asked. "Pearl's not doomed to become Clarius, to wither and die?"

"It will buy her, and the Jumi, some time," Sierra admitted, "but even if Drakonis was not siphoning off the energy, it would not be enough, and would only prolong the inevitable. There really is no help without the Goddess herself, and if things continue as they are, she will be imbalanced and dangerous. Vadise swears she can hear the Goddess crying out for help."

Elazul had not liked that answer.

The Jumi spent quite a bit of time with his own thoughts. Elazul had been avoiding Ariesa in particular, she noticed. He wasn't trying to reject her, to hurt her, but he was, nevertheless, unsure of what to think of her now that she seemed flawed. And Ariesa... Sierra could tell she was upset, and trying not to show it, Elazul's rejection cutting her deeper than she wanted to admit.

Sierra had been quietly talking to Ariesa for some time. The girl - was she a girl, or a woman? It was always hard to tell, with a sprite - was an enigma. Despite Vadise's assurances that there was more strength inside, to Sierra, she seemed nothing more than a reserved, confused young woman. Just the sort of vulnerability Drakonis could exploit.

But what surprised her even more was Ariesa's reaction when Sierra outlined her plan. "There is no guarantee we can return," Sierra told Ariesa. She had been expecting to coax and cajole her to the possible suicide quest that was traveling to Drakonis's lair, but "I'll do it" was out of Ariesa's mouth almost as soon as she began. And the look on her face - it was cold deadly anger.

Perhaps there was something to the girl after all.

"If she goes, I go," came a male voice. Ariesa turned, startled. Sierra looked over to see the Jumi knight with guardian following slightly behind, approaching them with determination.

"Jumi, this has nothing to do with you," she told him. Not that she wouldn't have been grateful for the help, but what did Jumi have to do with dragons?

They were too valuable nowadays to waste, even though many believed they were now no more than useless dirt. Sierra always felt she knew too much, and here once again, she knew better. The Jumi were hope. They were life. And they were diminishing.

"Elazul... you can't..." Ariesa protested weakly, uncomfortably.

"It has plenty to do with me," he answered, with his guardian now beside him nodding vigorously. "These Mana Stones were supposed to help Pearl and the Jumi, and obviously Drakonis knows something about them."

The flinch of Elazul's eyes was barely perceptible, as he recovered himself quickly, but Sierra caught it, and suddenly all was clear.

_Those two?_ she wondered. Something limited by tradition, by distance... Was this young man something else to break a custom nearly as old as the Jumi themselves? An interesting young man, and an unusual young woman.

"You know the risks?" Elazul nodded vigorously, his manner showing as much determination as the had the girl. She had to give him credit for courage, certainly. Ariesa gazed at him gratefully, but he studiously avoided her eyes.

"I want to go, too!" his guardian piped up.

To that, Sierra didn't know what to say. A Jumi's guardian was none of her business, but... her stomach sank. That frail girl, following them through the flames? She would only be a burden.

Fortunately, her knight seemed to feel the same. "Pearl..."

"No, Elazul," the girl replied with a confidence that took Sierra a bit by surprise. "We shouldn't be separated again."

Elazul looked pensive, and a long moment passed between knight and guardian. "I see... Pearl..."

Sierra still felt doubtful, but Ariesa interjected. "She can come, too, Sierra." Her voice hinted that she knew more than she was letting on.

_What was going on with these three_? She didn't know, but she had to trust them as much as they were trusting her.

------------------------------------

Escad responded to Vadise's summons only with wariness. She expected no less, he was not the sort to instinctively trust, seeing only his ultimate goal.

But he had come, and that was all that mattered.

She interrogated him on Drakonis's plans, and now, free of the dragon's control, he was able to tell it all. The vague sense that had told him it was either Elazul, or Ariesa, who would fill Drakonis's needs, though he had no idea why; how he was trapped until the end, though he did not know why he mattered. The one thing he neatly avoided was the question of how he had agreed to it all.

"You wanted strength?" she began, cutting to the heart of things.

Escad blinked. "What do you know about it?"

_I know what Drakonis might promise to get what he wants_, she thought to herself. But that was neither here nor there. "It is written across your face, your soul," she told him. "I have some ability to read such."

Escad did not speak, and she continued. "You should know by now the strength was tainted. It was simple power. You think you know what strength is? You need inner strength."

"Olbohn said much the same. What is it with you all?" Escad grumbled, irritated.

"Perhaps we see some things you can't."

Resentment crossed Escad's face. He _had_ been trapped, and she could not help but have pity for him. Much like Ariesa had been, though Elazul did not know that; she was considering whether or not to enlighten the Jumi on the subject. Much like dragoons were, though her yoke on Sierra was very light. "You need to tap into your connection to Mana. The fairies have been trying to get you to acknowledge it for quite some time."

"Fairies?" Escad blurted out, then squeezing his hands into fists.

"So you _can_ show some restraint," she said. "You must learn to surrender. Or this will not work." She motioned him to follow, and as she turned away, she felt him behind her. Stubborn, questioning, but he was coming, and for now, that was all that mattered.

She led him to the Mana Stone, and slowly, gently, worked the bond, layering the element of Tree over the chaotic workings of the baptism and Drakonis's bond. Slowly, gently, she crafted the elements around each other. Escad frowned at first, feeling the tension as the elements met each other with a bit of resistance; but slowly acceptance crossed his face, then even more slowly turning into a look of wonder. Vadise let her work settle for a moment, then broke the flow.

"What…" Escad gulped. "What was that?"

"The beginning of your understanding." He nodded, respectfully. "What did you realize?" she asked.

"I thought imagination could also be dark," he said, slowly. "And it can, but they are really the same, aren't they?"

Vadise nodded. "There is light within the darkness. Darkness is a light of its own, and sometimes light hides behind it." The dragon thought of the Goddess, and shivered a bit. How true it was, and how dangerous those two opposites could be when imbalanced. "You, I think, have the greatest possibility to truly understand the light. you have been tested, a Holy Knight sent to endure the Underworld, and I would hope you now have the wisdom to understand both parts of the whole."

"Olbohn," Escad muttered. "I should have listened to him."

She softened a bit. "Power is in wisdom. That is what I have given you here. Soon, you shall see. What have you learned?"

"I did get my wish, sort of," Escad admitted. "But I wonder now about the things I lost as well, parts of myself, parts of my friendships. After all I hoped for… hope has a dark side as well."

"There is a reason hope was in Pandora's box," Vadise told him, and silently watched him leave.

She had shown him only a bare scratch, but it was _truth_. It was an abstract thing, no vision, but powerful nonetheless.

She would have been interested to see how far the Jumi Knight would have been able to go, had not the damage to his core blocked the flow. Not for lack of trying on the Stone's part. She wished she could heal him herself, but it didn't work that way; now matter how she worked Mana, Jumi were something of their own.

The young man was special; she had known that as soon as she had recognized his core. Not to mention his guardian, who puzzled her still. And if Drakonis, unable to use him, had chosen the young woman instead, that meant there was something to her as well. Without a core, however, it did not read off as clear to her.

Whatever it was, it meant Ariesa was part of it still.

------------------------------------

Elazul still would not address her directly, even after announcing he would accompany her. She trailed him into the woods beyond, he rapidly outpacing her, and she left with the decision whether to run after him or hold her ground.

In frustration, she grabbed Pearl by the arm, the guardian lingering somewhat behind her knight and looking towards him with the same sense of questioning that Ariesa felt crossing her own face. "Why?" was the single word she asked, and immediately regretted it when hopeless sadness crossed Pearl's features.

"I don't know," the other woman said, shaking her head. "I've been trying to read it, but it's not something I can see, fully. It's of the heart, not the core." Ariesa's face fell. "But no matter. We'll be with you anyway?" she said, feigning cheerfulness.

" I suppose." Ariesa went to locate her apprentices, to tell them she would be leaving yet again. She hated doing this to them.

They were in the clearing with Vadise, cavorting as the young often did, and as she approached them she felt as if her own footsteps had the weight of the world dragging behind them. Thoma stood by, unmoving, but a small smile crossing his face, an expression she had never before seen on the imperial soldier. He was the first to notice her, motioning to the twins, who quickly quieted their energetic antics.

The two elven siblings approached her cautiously, perhaps sensing her mood, and she leaned forward slightly to speak to them in low whispers that nevertheless carried across the clearing. They listened in rapt attention as she spelled out the situation, then promptly ignored her. "We'll go too!" they piped up nearly in unison.

She could only shake her head at their boundless enthusiasm, and pour firmness into her voice. "No. This is too dangerous." They protested, of course, but Daena sauntered over and added a few sharp words, and gradually, they shushed.

Thoma had respectfully held back, and now sat on a log, some distance away. He had been rather reticent since the regathering. He looked towards her, his eyes tired and worn. "If it's alright with you… I may stay with Bud and Lisa," he told her.

Ariesa regarded him. He was so young yet, too young for whatever he had been put through; he. had seen more than enough of evil for the time being. "Of course," she readily agreed.

With her primary responsibilities accounted for, she turned to Daena. "I do not want you to go," she told her gently. "Just having Pearl and Elazul along is worry enough for me."

She had expected argument, but her best friend picked up her meaning, shaking her head. "You are right. I… I would love to fight by your side, but... I must think about my Gato obligations."

"Take care of the twins…" Ariesa told her… _just in case_, was the unfinished sentiment, and Daena nodded. She gave her friend's hand a quick squeeze.

The last person she had to speak to had stepped some distance away, unsurprisingly as far as he could from Elazul. It was not without doubt that she approached him, but she felt she had to try. "Escad?" she asked, loading her question into the pronunciation of his name.

He looked at her, a bit strangled. "I…" He swallowed struggling to admit the rest. "I… can't. Not after years in the Underworld. It's…"

"I see," Ariesa murmured, not bothering to conceal the scorn and judgment that infected her voice. She wheeled, and walked away from him with no further comment.

"Wait," his voice followed her as she swept away, and a hand clamped on her shoulder. She paused, and kept her body still, but tilted her head to see… anxiety, fear… in those aqua eyes.

"There's something you should know," he began awkwardly. She'd seen the way he'd looked at her before, sometimes critical, sometimes lustful, but to her surprise, there was none of those emotions now. "I don't think it is a good idea for you to do this. The promise..." he told her, words tripping over each other.

The bargain she'd made, the devil's bargain that she'd been tricked and trapped into. But no longer. "Larc freed me," she insisted.

"From the bargain, not the baptism," he told her, hand gripping her a little more firmly. "There's more to it… I've been thinking about it, and I think I've figured out something you should know…"

"I'm not interested in anything you have to say," she replied curtly, and strode away from him. His hand slid off her shoulder brusquely, she practically tearing it from his grasp, as if he did not want to let her go. But she slid free of his grasp, and he did not follow.

She shivered slightly despite herself, the intensity of his touch more than Elazul had ever offered her, her head slightly twisted because of it. He had _lied_ to her, betrayed her, and now she was walking away. But part of her mind drifted to his words nevertheless; she wondered if perhaps she did not have the whole story. Had Larc been stuck? Was Escad perhaps stuck as well? Perhaps as trapped as she herself had been? What was the truth? She didn't know what to believe anymore.

She shook it off, shoving it to the dark corner of her mind that was filled with things she preferred not to contemplate, a corner that was increasingly filling lately. Daena rose her eyes from where she tended to the twins.

"Well, then," she suggested, feigning brightness just as Pearl had. "Perhaps we can arrange to meet back here? In, say, two weeks?"

"I think that would be fine," Daena agreed slowly. "That's enough time for Escad and I to make a stop at Gato, and the twins and Thoma, I'm sure, can stay here." Behind her, Escad had followed, adding his nod of agreement for whatever it was worth.

She looked around. The only ones accounted for were the Jumi… but without knowing _how_ she knew, she was certain Pearl and Elazul were together - with Vadise, she thought, and the Stone. She let that thought sit in the back of her head as goodbyes were issued all around, Daena and Escad turning to leave as Sierra made her appearance, with one finger summoning Ariesa towards the glade of Vadise once again.

The Jumi joined them on Sierra's heels, and Ariesa studiously avoided the eyes of both. Sierra hastily spelled out the plan, and Vadise only nodded thoughtfully as her dragoon spelled out their intentions.

"The Jumi with you?" she inquired evenly. "I think your choice of party is wise." That long neck and enormous head took them all in at once, it seemed, before finally settling on Ariesa.

"You have been dragged into this," the dragon said, all the dignity of the ages in her voice. "Not surprising, considering Drakonis. But you know," she continued, her voice now almost conversational, " there is no going back."

They were loaded words, bearing the weight of a hidden meaning behind them. Ariesa's tortured thoughts churned as she looked away, staring into the glade beyond, anything to avoid the eyes of those she respected, those she cared for, those she loved, burning into her soul.

She wondered, about what it was she had been, what it was she was now. _Was she really someone who could confront this?_ Doubt crept up. She was too young, too experienced, too deficient in a number of things… but her desire crept forward, her desire to do something, be something.

"The tree has wisdom and wants," Vadise murmured softly, as if to herself, as if reading her thoughts.

Ariesa raised her eyes hesitantly, to find that one, sad, optic orb of the dragon meeting hers, and she wondered. Wondered in a way she hadn't before, about past, about future, about who she really was. Vadise, for her part, scrutinized her in a way that made Ariesa feel that everything about her was on display.

"You know well enough what you must do," the dragon told her, the one eye penetrating her soul in a way Akravator and Jajara had not. "It is far too late for you to turn your back on this. If Drakonis is not stopped, the entire world will suffer at his hands. You cannot escape your destiny..."

"Larc told me the something the same," she said sadly. "I'm getting sick of trying to deal with a destiny I don't know anything about."

Vadise's look was not unsympathetic. "We all have to deal with that," she said gently. "Larc had to deal with the destiny he was handed, and now you must go after him."

"It'll be a while to get there," pointed out Ariesa. "The portal to the underworlds is way back near Domina."

"I wish the Stone had enough power left to take you there directly," Vadise said, and Ariesa wished that herself, thinking how easily Larc had been able to jump them from the Norn Peaks to the Bone Fortress. "But Larc drained it too thoroughly."

"In that case," Sierra suggested, "we had better get going."

------------------------------------

Gato had not changed much in her absence, Daena observed.

The temple was still closed; despite all that had happened, the time was not yet up, and she found herself contemplating the odd fact of time being understood based on what happened within it, not how much of it there was.

Escad seemed profoundly uncomfortable, arriving in Gato for the first time since Matilda's loss. In the few days of travel since leaving Vadise's forest, they had exchanged at first only a bare few words, both of them only grudgingly starting to open up. It seemed so strange to her, they had grown up together, but now… the things that had driven them apart and killed two of their number were things of adulthood, things that simply superseded the accoutrements of childhood.

And they were also topics the two scrupulously avoided.

Her responsibilities were important, but few, and took little of her time. Despite her concern, Gato seemed to be moving on well enough without their abbess. Still, the trip was not a waste; she found it reassuring to see it thus, and pleasurable to be in her hometown once again, though she did feel the occasional pang of guilt at not accompanying Ariesa.

Escad had neatly disappeared shortly after they had entered the town limits. Her word, it seemed, was all that was needed to re-integrate him into Gato society without question. He had his own things to attend to, she knew.

Bereft of her own rooms at the temple, she found herself wandering. Securing a room at the inn was easy enough; that was a given, underwritten by the Temple. Yet she did not want to stay there, to be in the company of nuns who had no nearby family to stay with, and dusk until dawn, she found herself out and about.

She found herself lingering for hours by the Mekiv waterfall, rushing down to the caverns below, water flowing by then disappearing.

This was where Matilda had most often seen fairies, when she had looked for them instead of them coming to her, and Rubens as well – now, it was more clear, now that she knew Rubens had been Jumi. She wondered – was it for Matilda, was it for Rubens, was it for the flames themselves that those fairies had kept coming to the holy city? Perhaps all of the above.

She herself had never seen the fairies in Gato, though sometimes, when it was as quiet as it was now, she thought she could feel them. She stared into the pool into which the waterfall poured, entranced by her own rippling reflection.

Behind her own face, appeared… the vision of someone she had never expected to here again.

She wheeled in surprise. "Matilda," she gasped, her heart pounding wondering if she was seeing things. Before her, was the familiar figure of her dearest friend, not as she had seen her last, but with all the blossom of youth restored to her once again.

"Yes," a familiar voice replied. "Daena, it is I." Daena found her eyes watering beside herself. Matilda, so much the same, and still so different. Somehow, more… wise.

"How?" was her single-word question.

"It is simple," Matilda replied. "I am a Wisdom now. I belong to Mana…" She trailed off for a second, as if reminiscing, then returned her attention to Daena. "You may ask me for advice to your problems, as you have so many times before." The Wisdom paused, before speaking again, quieter than before. "And finally, I may have some answers for us both."

Daena began hesitantly, but soon enough the entirety of the story came spilling out, her worry for her friends infecting her voice, tears building in her eyes. Matilda sat beside her, gentle concern in her eyes as the tale unfolded, until Daena's words finally ran dry.

"You are so hard on yourself," Matilda said. "You think you have abandoned your friends, but you are still contributing while you are here, just not in the same way. We are all part of the greater plan."

"I couldn't go with her," Daena protested. "I couldn't. You understand, don't you?"

Matilda only smiled, a peaceful smile that Daena never remembered being on her face in life. "I do," she assured Daena. "I know the Underworld now, and it is no place for you. The others… all who went have a reason to be there right now."

"The Underworld," Daena murmured. "Is that where you plan to stay? Is this visit of your spirit all I get?"

Matilda seemed to ponder that. "No," she murmured equally quietly. "I think… I think I am ready to step outside it, ready to come back to the world."

"But not to live again," Daena said morosely.

Matilda sighed. "Not in the way you would like. But Daena, you see, there are many ways for one to exist, to be a part of things. We all have power of our own." She looked around at the waterfall. "The fairies will not come into sight today. They take some time to get used to a Wisdom, both attracted and afraid." She paused. "I once thought all I had was from the fairies. Now, I see they were the ones pulled to me."

She sat next to the waterfall, and Daena could sense fairies peeking around it, looking at the shade of her big sister. "Do you remember how we used to come here when we were younger?"

"I do," Daena said softly, as they began to reminisce of their younger days. But it was only for a minute, until Matilda became weak, and began to fade. Her seemingly-solid form was revealed for the half-spirit it was, and Daena found herself reaching for Matilda involuntarily, but the other woman only shook her head, and Daena found her hand sliding through thin air.

"I will be with you, as we all find our way to the new era of the Goddess…" Matilda said, her voice fading off into a whisper that hung in the air as she disappeared into the mountain breezes.

Daena found herself totally alone, and the truth of that set in. She looked into the pool, wishing to drip her own tears into it, but instead sat gazing at her reflection for a long time, and somehow found strength.

"Matilda," she whispered to the pool, and perhaps to the hiding fairies beyond, "I will be strong for us both."

------------------------------------

Ariesa found herself staring at that tombstone once again, remembering Escad and she smuggling themselves out here in the night. She couldn't bring herself to think he was evil; in a way, she liked the guy, even if he seemed tragically misguided. Or lost. Like she felt herself.

The mood around the tombstone was as solemn as one might expect, and she looked around in vain at her companions, within herself, for some sort of reassurance. Elazul and Pearl stood close together, and she could have sworn she felt the resonance of their cores as both looked around anxiously, knight and guardian near mirrors of each other. Sierra was only a couple steps away from her, examining her closely.

For once, she could not hide it. "I'm scared."

Sierra looked sympathetic. "I don't blame you."

"But we have to," Ariesa replied. _I have a debt to pay_, she thought to herself.

"Then we go together. Hang on to each other." Sierra took Pearl's hand as a arm grabbed Ariesa roughly from behind. She reached down to clasp Elazul's hand tightly, before falling into light once again.

------------------------------------

Pearl looked around as the light faded to red walls. She felt like she should be scared of something here, but… it just seemed to be a warm cave. She didn't really feel especially bothered by it.

Besides, Elazul was by her side as always. She knew he would be, but... for how much longer, she wondered. And not out of fear, just realizing things would change. But for the moment, his presence made her feel safe. She inched a bit closer to him instinctively.

Until the voice boomed down.

"Sierra. So you have come to retrieve your brother. How… fraternal." Loaded into that voice was open scorn, and a touch of near-madness. "And you, Ariesa," the voice continued, cackling. "I thought we had a deal."

"It's not a deal if you lie!" she shouted, brandishing her sword futilely to the open air around them. Sierra placed one paw on her shoulder, calming her down a bit. "Drakonis! I'm coming for you!" she continued, only a touch sedated.

"Quite noble, Ariesa. Such honor in a warrior should be appreciated. This is just a token of my thanks." Out of nowhere, shadows resolved themselves into a half-dozen black knights that strode towards them menacingly.

Pearl was suddenly afraid, but almost before Elazul and Ariesa had whipped their swords out, Sierra's knives were cleaving through the undead soldiers with lightning quickness, leaving little but cleanup for the others. She recoiled despite herself, reminding herself they were already dead as the spirits withered away to become Shadoles, leaving six of the shadowy spirits hanging in midair.

"He he he!" one of the six giggled. "Very nice, but you'll be at the bottom of the Underworld soon enough!"

Pearl knew not to touch them, but suddenly they were _everywhere, _their voices shrieking at her from all sides, heads and tails whipping towards her.

She instinctively covered her eyes as she felt herself falling once again, second guessing herself as she wondered why she had come. _For herself? For Ariesa, for Elazul_? For the two of them together, she knew, deep down. It was something she wanted to happen, but she couldn't help but feel sadness despite it all, and that was her last framed thought before consciousness zipped away.

------------------------------------

Ariesa groaned in a way that was only partly from the pain of the descent, and partly from the shock and feeling of dread that had begun to rise. She forced the feeling down only with effort. "It was easier getting down here the last time," she said with a hint of sarcasm.

"They did us a favor, actually," Sierra told her, pulling her slightly roughly to her feet. "None of us but you could have gotten down here. I haven't been baptized, and Jumi can't be."

"Why is that?" asked Pearl from the side, where Elazul was trying to fuss over her. She brushed him off with a wave of her hand, turning her attention to his core with worry on her face.

"They are Mana. So their Mana can't be shaped," Sierra replied matter-of-factly. "If there are Jumi to be found down here, they are here by their own choice. Olbohn tries to keep them out as much as possible, though; he dislikes having creatures down here over which he has no control."

"The core stays in the real world, and their spirit joins Mana until it is called once again. Some choose to linger," Elazul murmured. One hand was unconsciously reaching for his injured core, and Pearl stretched one hand towards him. "No," he told her gently in response to the worry written across her face. "It doesn't hurt. It just feels… weird… down here."

"I sense evil," Sierra said, sniffing the air as it evil had a foul smell to it. Maybe it did; Ariesa could certainly feel it, and the Jumi seemed the most uncomfortable of all. Elazul had a white-knuckled grip on his sword - or would have, if that crystalline hand showed white knuckled - and Pearl stood at his side, looking perturbed and disturbed, weaponless but ready to fight.

_Pearl_. That had been the reason she had come here the first time, whether Elazul understood that or not. And she had been used, betrayed… but not by Escad, or even Larc, caught in the same web. No, there was only one to blame for this.

The thought gave her strength, and she was the first to stride over to the bony gate, which withered at her touch to reveal the steep staircase beyond, down to the Pulpit of Eternal Flame. She took a deep breath and began the descent, the familiar sense of her companions following her down.

Breaking into the enormous cavern beyond, she suppressed a chill as she saw Drakonis. The man who styled himself the dragon emperor, his dragoon once again standing stiffly by his side. Neither seemed surprised to see the new arrivals; she imagined the Shadoles had relayed the message quickly enough.

But Drakonis's eyes grew wide at the sight of the Jumi. He recovered himself in order to put on a sneering expression. "A Jumi Knight and Guardian. Are you so eager to get rid of your cores? I hear there's a jewel hunter who could probably save you some trouble."

"Not quite yet," replied Elazul, slipping into a stance of casual arrogance only a young man could play off.

"No matter." Drakonis's eyes blazed red with madness. Far beyond, Ariesa could see the answer from the Mana Stones in the lake of flames, and further still, impossibly, a castle seemed to shimmer in the heat-haze. "Jumi will just be more fuel. After so many years trapped, wanting to grasp for Mana once again… I may now return to my original form, and flee this pathetic underworld!"

Larc looked on uncomfortably, and when he spoke, his voice was a simper that Ariesa would not have expected from the wolf-man. "And what of me, master?" he asked, cringing slightly.

"Larc!" Sierra cried, agitated. "He's using you! Why can't you see?"

Drakonis put one hand to his chin, considering. "You have, indeed, made an excellent _servant_," he said, emphasizing the one word. "I could hardly have reached the Stones without you, though now that I have their powers, I don't need the _conduit_ anymore. But you got something out of it too, I think. A chance to revenge yourself on two of your nemeses. Deathbringer, and Jajara, who stuck you with me in the first place." Larc flinched visibly. "Do you think you can really hide your resentment? It hardly matters, a dragoon is compelled to follow his dragon." Sierra started, and Drakonis continued. "You are not the first brave warrior I have bent to my will. They all serve me, whether they like it or not." He leered at Ariesa.

"Compelled?" Sierra asked, pausing in midstride. Beside her, Elazul stood stone-still, his expression… considering.

"Oh? Vadise didn't tell you that part, did she? I suppose her leash on you is light enough," Drakonis said mildly. "You thought it was the equality of the knight-guardian bond, did you?" He gestured towards Elazul. "As if humans could ever be the equal of _dragons_. As if you could be privileged enough to know everything we know!"

He turned to Larc. "I know well enough what you think of me. You hate me just as much as Deathbringer, as Jajara. But your pride, your pain, your hate, bring me joy, your futile wishing you could be a hero like your sister. Those sorts of emotions are so easy to manipulate," he said, looking straight at Ariesa.

She felt shivers running down her body. _A warrior who is worthy. _It hadn't been Escad; it hadn't been Larc. It had been _Drakonis_ all along who had taken her desire and raped it for his own ends.

She still didn't know why she was the one he wanted, but she no longer cared. The sword was in her hand and she was running for Drakonis before she knew what she was doing.

_Pain_. A dull thud hit her head, and she fell backwards, her ears ringing. Shouts of the others were heard distantly, Elazul's voice yelling over them all, though she could make out none of the words.

Larc stood over her, axe raised. The throbbing on the side of her head told her he had only smashed the flat side of the axe into her head, bringing her down where he could have issued a killing blow. The axe was raised, quavering, and tears were forming in Larc's eyes.

_Compelled_, she remembered hazily. "You're not free of the Underworld yet," he whispered, in the tone of a warning.

Sierra pulled up short some short distance away as Drakonis raised his hand. "One word from me," he warned, and Larc's hands pulled back as if preparing for a mighty swing. As Ariesa's vision cleared, she could see Sierra's hands tense on her weapons, but when she tried to pull herself up, one of Larc's heavy boots met her chest, shoving her to the ground once again. "Do you really wish to risk challenging me, Sierra? I doubt Vadise would take well to your losing her."

"End this." From somewhere, Larc found his voice once again. "You have no quarrel with them. This is between us."

Drakonis looked surprised, but recovered. "Larc. You wish to fight me, now?"

"Larc!" gasped Sierra, but her brother waved his free hand at her dismissively.

"I had no choice then, Sierra, but I can make this choice now. Let me protect you." Drakonis turned to him, and Larc met his eyes, not without effort, Ariesa thought. "I brought you the Mana you wanted, power for you to amplify. I demand a reward!"

"Reward?" Drakonis inquired, seeming almost intrigued.

"Yes!" Larc retorted. "Let Sierra be. I want to fight you _myself_."

Drakonis looked almost tenderly at the deceased hero. "Of course. You are my dragoon, my partner. You should have this chance. But I want you to have the best chance possible... so first you shall be rewarded for your loyal service!"

Larc's body suddenly was stretched, grotesquely, painfully distended. Ariesa rolled frantically out of the way, mindless of the rocky ground poking and cutting her, desperately helpless as Larc's screams echoed across the lake of fire.

"What are you doing?!" Sierra screamed, but as she dove, it was Elazul who caught her with the stronger stone hand, against which Sierra only wriggled. "Sierra, that's the magic of death, you'll be caught up in it!" he yelled at her, while behind him Pearl touched a hand to her pearlescent core, no longer white but clouding angrily.

"It's just what he wanted," Drakonis cackled. "He always wanted to be as strong as his sister... I granted his wish."

Ariesa pulled herself awkwardly up to hands and knees, to see an enormous centaur rearing where Larc had stood only moments before. His bulky body moved awkwardly, every movement a strain, but the roar that emanated from his lungs shook the very Underworld itself.

With a cry, Sierra tore herself from Elazul's grasp, but before she could reach Drakonis, the beast that had been her brother blocked her with one of those enormous legs, sending her tumbling. Drakonis laughed sadistically in the background.

"Rash, stupid fool. He knew better. Very well, Larc, let your last task be to remove these nuisances for me. I have things to attend to, anyway." In a flash, he was gone, leaving only the monstrosity he created behind.

It was driving Sierra hard, sheer speed being the only thing that was saving the dragoon from a quick defeat and death. Ariesa struggled to her feet, hand flailing for her sword, only to find herself quite firmly being wrapped up by Elazul's arms.

She squirmed slightly as he pulled her to his chest, his flesh arm braced around her, the stone arm over it, away from her skin. "Stay out of it," he whispered quietly, as Pearl leaned over his shoulder to look at Ariesa. "This is her fight."

The dragoon leapt and dove with skill and speed surpassing that which was humanly possible. _Vadise_, Ariesa realized. _The white dragon is helping her dragoon, while Larc's master has abandoned him_.

Sierra had gained the upper hand with that boost, and Larc's bulk struggled, unable to dodge her blows quickly enough. As soon as he lifted one leg to stomp her, Sierra would flit out of the way, knives swiftly catching veins, tendons, she flinching every time she broke through to blood.

"Larc!" she cried. "Why does this have to be? You once saved my life with your own, and this is all I can do in return?" The monster, of course, could not hear her, and raged as before, Sierra bracing herself for what she had to do.

Out of nowhere, Pearl came running up to dive into the fray, and Elazul gasped. By the time he and Ariesa had noticed her, she was caught in the middle, way too deep in the fight for either to reach her. Elazul's arms tensed, and Ariesa leaned her head gently against his core, feeling fear bordering on mad panic coursing through it.

Sierra dropped her weapons slightly, equally confused, and the beast merely looked down, confused, at the insect that was now bothering it.

Pearl stood there, the tiny woman gazing back up at a beast ten times her size with determined fury. Ariesa realized with surprised that she could _feel_ her core, even at this distance, a churning, chaotic energy that was completely at odds with the shy, sweet girl, and an answering pulse, almost a shout, from the Mana Stone of Fire.

And if _she_ could feel it, Elazul certainly could.

"What is she doing?" she asked quietly.

Elazul did not move his eyes from the scene before them. "She's… disrupting the connection," he said, almost to himself. "She's not using Mana, she's just letting it flow through her, and bending it along the way." Even more quietly, he finished, "I didn't think that was possible."

The centaur wailed an ear-piercing shriek, and its hard outer shell cracked, then shattered, enormous bony pieces tumbling down to disappear into sparkling motes of light before crashing against the ground. Pearl stood impassively as the shell that had housed Larc fell all around her. The rest of the creature… deflated… snapping inside itself to leave a bruised and battered Larc curled on the ground, breathing heavily and obviously in pain.

Sierra ran and knelt over her brother, leaning forward to stroke the fur on his head. "What were you thinking, Larc?" she asked soothingly. "How could you expect he would be keeping any promise to you?"

"It was a vain hope," Larc rasped, "just as Escad thought he could get more strength, and Ariesa thought there was help for her friends… but faced with poor odds, we take long shots. I thought… if I had even a chance to defeat him, I could return to the land of the living, return to you… but I didn't realize how deeply I was trapped…"

"I'm sorry," he finished, and was still. A moment passed, and his body faded away.

"The Underworld has taken him back." Sierra said flatly. "Damn Deathbringer who killed him, damn Drakonis who used him, and most of all, damn Jajara and his power to hold Larc between life and death!" She leaned her snout back and howled, a mournful sound that seemed somehow at home in the expanse of the underworld. "_Larc! I will avenge you_!"

The echoes of her howl still hung in the air as a tremendous force began rattling the cavern. The lake of flames began to roil, fire spilling like liquid over the side. Elazul leapt to his feet, pulling Ariesa along with him.

"Follow me!" Pearl called, and Ariesa realized the girl had already run across the cavern to the opening. The Jumi was quickly followed by Sierra, then Elazul behind her. He stopped to make sure Ariesa made it through, sword out as if he could wrestle the cavern into quiescence, but only paused a moment before rationality sent him through the opening as well.

Before them, Pearl awaited… with Olbohn.

"You're the one who trapped me into this!" Ariesa hissed, and Elazul whipped his sword out, but a gesture from Pearl settled him quickly enough.

"There's no time for that," Olbohn replied evenly. "Drakonis oversteps himself this time. You have to leave, _now_! Shadoles!" he called.

A dozen of the strange creatures popped around him. "Yes, master?" they said as one, in that strange singsong voice.

"Remove these to the land of the living. They are not to die yet." As the Shadoles surrounded them, high-pitched, off-key squeals were heard, only to be drowned out by the sounds of rocks crashing around them.

------------------------------------

Thoma watched the twins, neatly tossing around spells. They were the closest to his age, true, not to mention height, but even so, it was taking a little bit of time to make friends.

He felt… lighter… without the burden of steel armor on him, and not just in a physical way. Instead, he now wore a simple outfit of soft Topple cotton, and a sturdy leather vest. He ran one hand through dark, wavy brown hair, enjoying the unexpected feeling of air through it. Watching the twins… he realized there were attacks armor would not defend against in any case.

Vadise joined his side. She had been the picture of hospitality; it wasn't home, he didn't have that anymore, but he felt at peace here nevertheless.

"What will you do now?" Vadise asked him, hitting him immediately with the question for which he had no answer.

Thoma shrugged, feigning indifference. He was, understandably, a little wary of dragons, but Vadise was… different. Still, how could he tell her all the things that were going on in his head? It was only beginning to make sense to he himself. He had escaped whatever… compulsion… he had been under when Deathbringer had died, or re-died, or whatever. Still, it rankled… and knowing that Deathbringer had been as beholden to Jajara as he himself had been to the Emperor, he wondered if the rumors he had heard from other soldiers about dragons and their dragoons were true. It made him wonder about Larc and Drakonis. Or Sierra and Vadise, for that matter.

Vadise seemed to sense his suspicion, but she chose not to let him be. "A soldier of Forsena," she told him. "You know no magic, I suppose."

"We weren't allowed to use it," Thoma said defensively, eyes on Lisa as she cast a halo spell over the clearing. A bug neatly exploded as it was caught in the magic ring.

"Magic was never the primary force of that country," Vadise told him, they both now looking towards the elven twins. "Its strength was always in its knights."

"Knights? Like, Jumi knights?" Thoma asked, surprised.

Vadise ignored his question. "I meant to talk to you," she said. "About Jajara, and the Empire."

Thoma quivered. "The dragon that imprisoned us, controlling us through Deathbringer?" He startled himself, not having meant to let that slip.

The white dragon shook her head. "You know little of what the dragons do , and why. They are among those who protect Mana from its enemies. Some of those enemies pursue the Stones. Some pursue the fairies. Some pursue the Jumi; Deathbringer did, destroying that race, then turning to the Stones. All seek Mana, but it is useless without the Sword, and the Goddess, and now it seems Deathbringer had been searching for the Sword, with Jajara's blessing."

"I was taught the dragons, the Jumi, and the fairies hid Mana for themselves," Thoma told her. "I was one of many sent to look for the Sword, so we could stop those who were hiding Mana away.

"Jajara hoarded it, yes, but not for the reasons you are suggesting," Vadise replied. "He was our leader, of sorts, for a while, if only by sheer volume of power. He had the Dark Stone; he had the Light Stone after Argot, our king before him, destroyed himself by drawing on more power than he could handle. Jajara was stronger than Argot by virtue of his understanding of balance, of the ways the powers of death and life hold each other together." Her one blue eye shut, and the puckered skin around the hollow socket squeezed, as if grabbing onto something else she was not saying. Her eye opened again, and she continued. "Only, Jajara never understood the times when submission and surrender is called for, the way those balance the Goddess's plan as well. Something I am trying to teach to those two," she said, jerking her long draconic neck towards where Bud and Lisa were practicing. "Mana as a form of power is grossly misunderstood."

Thoma felt drained, as if every emotion had leached out of him to somewhere sink in the forest floor. "Then…" he gulped, and began again. "Then everything the Empire taught us is nothing?"

Vadise spoke gently. "Wisdom is never easy. The beginnings of understanding are painful."

"Then…" Thoma had trouble forming the words. "Why did Jajara imprison me? How can _that_ be something the Goddess wanted to happen?" Suppressed memories threatened to surface, the sounds of undead screams haunting his time in the bowels of the Bone Fortress.

"But you are here now, aren't you?" Vadise asked pointedly. He had to nod in agreement. "There is light within the darkness. There is always a way out. Think of the future," she encouraged him, "of what you desire."

That made Thoma think of something. "If Larc drained your stone, what happens to you?" he asked. "Will you die?"

"No," Vadise laughed, a low, melodious sound. "Merely worried, but I am not weakened. In fact, possibly stronger than ever."

An explosion racked the trees beyond. "Lisa! Bud!" the dragon called, suddenly distracted. "Remember what I told you!"

"Sorry!" came a young male voice. Thoma almost laughed as Vadise shook her head, and Lisa hurriedly pulled up a water spell to douse the effects of Bud's work.

The impromptu fire died with a sizzle, and two exhausted twins returned to their teacher.

"What happened?" their teacher asked patiently.

"I was trying to do things Lisa's way. She said that was the right way," Bud said defensively.

"First time you've listened," Lisa muttered.

Vadise sighed. "Bud," she began, "I don't think that is what you are meant for. Your… understanding, I guess you could say, is different. The two of you are attuned to the spirits differently, and I think you will find certain of the elements have more… affinity… for you than others. But more than that… it is the way you approach things."

Bud looked doubtful as she turned to him. "You think you are behind Lisa in progress, because she mastered the ordered ways you were taught, and you didn't?" The boy's frown only deepened. "Your job is to surrender to it, to let it flow through you, to be shaped by you."

"That doesn't take any skill," the boy insisted.

"On the contrary," Vadise replied. "It takes all the skill in the world. You can summon enormous amounts of power, and your job is to keep it from destroying you." The boy seemed intrigued by that.

Suddenly, the dragon lifted her neck, head swiveling around first to the southeast, then slightly north to the glade where the weakened stone rested. "What is it?" asked Thoma, sensing her alarm.

"Sierra," she gasped, to no one in particular. She blinked, and looked at Thoma and the twins as if she had forgotten they were there. "I am sorry… I must go," she said hurriedly, tail swishing behind her as she disappeared to join the Stone.

------------------------------------

Sierra rose first on hands and knees, shaking herself slightly and trying to orient herself.

Gingerly moving her neck, she took a look around. Ariesa just lay on her back, hand to her head, while Elazul awkwardly pulled himself to his feet. Only Pearl seemed relatively sedate, knees pulled to her chest as she looked off in the distance.

"Where are we?" Sierra asked, not able to ascertain much except heat in the air.

"Somewhere near the desert," Elazul said definitively, although the rocky plateaus around them carried no sand.

"You sure?" she asked.

"Positive," he replied. For some reason, Pearl gave him a quick, anxious look, before drifting off again.

"Why are we here?" asked Ariesa, forcing herself up onto one knee.

"Possibly something having to do with _that_," Sierra told her, pointing in the distance.

The others followed her finger to where was visible, at some distance but in no way out of their field of vision, a dark, foreboding fortress, surrounded by a moat of flames licking at its walls, making the entire castle shimmer hazily.

"Drakonis's fortress," she proclaimed. "It's risen, from wherever he had it hidden all this time. It must have been the Fire Stone that helped him reconstruct it."

"No wonder the Underworld threatened to fall in on our heads, if that's what was coming up," Elazul snorted. "I suppose we have to go there, now?" Ariesa picked herself up behind him, quietly alert now.

A hush settled over the group, the heat of the air holding down conversation as they picked their way across the dead plateaus to their destination beyond.

The distance was not as far as they feared, perhaps only a handful of miles away, and soon enough they were nearly knocking on Drakonis's door. A rickety-looking wooden bridge, somehow holding together over the searing heat of the flames below it, was the only thing between them and the entrance. Sierra looked with trepidation at the looming castle before her. It was where she wanted to go, all this time, where she _needed_ to go, and yet she was afraid.

"Vadise, give me courage," she silently prayed. A shiver of Mana acknowledged her request, but to her surprise, she found the sensation building, the form of her dragon finally appearing beside her.

She was a translucent form, her spirit image, only part of the dragon with her while the rest of her waited back in the forest; but with the Stone weakened as it was, Sierra worried even that might be too much. "My lady!" she exclaimed. "You should not be here."

"It is alright," Vadise soothed. "My connection to the Stone is weakened, but unlike the others, not severed. My soul is with you to protect you. You must not face Drakonis on your own. He finds strength in his solitude, but that it his weakness as well. Lacking the bonds of caring and support, the bonds of life and Mana… he can never hope to achieve victory."

Sierra looked at her companions, wondering now what she had really done bringing them here. _What right did she have to drag them into any of this_?

Her eyes fell on the one, the guardian. True, she had seen what the Jumi had done for Larc, but that made her all the more reluctant. Jumi were keepers of Mana, and one with her power was more valuable than most. She could not risk her for any Goddess-damned renegade dragon, and if Pearl did not go, her knight would stay as well.

"Pearl… I can't ask this of you.." Sierra began softly.

The girl, small and fragile, nevertheless pulled herself to her full height, as it were. "The world will suffer it we do not stop Drakonis," she said gravely. Behind her, her knight stood still, waiting for her decision, then nodding after she spoke. Ariesa, beside her, shifted slightly.

Vadise's spirit grew serious. "He has been around for a long time," she murmured, "and that whole time, he has never desired for anything but to break order into chaos once again… The dragons came to realize that we could no longer hold aloof without the Goddess to protect us, that we were only barely another life form set adrift. We took on the protection of the Stones, joined with the fairies and bonded dragoons, seeking that connection to Mana that all of life needs."

The dragon hung her misty head. "I… am sorry."

"There is nothing to be sorry for," Sierra insisted.

"As much as I wish it was so, my dear partner… there are many things to be sorry for. The choices may have been inevitable, but the effects are there nonetheless. I am sorry for my part in the events that brought Drakonis to this day. I am sorry for the truths I have not told you, Sierra, and for things I still cannot tell you now." The dragon's eyes flickered to the Jumi, so quickly the dragoon thought she might have imagined it. "Yet, it is all part of the whole. Even Drakonis, though I hate to acknowledge that fact. And now, it is up to you. Drakonis tried to conquer the Goddess once before, and with him in the way, the Goddess, and the bonds of life itself, do not stand a chance."

Sierra nodded, breathing deeply. She knew she was approaching an understanding she had not had before, and she knew Vadise was right. She would do what she had to do.

------------------------------------

Ariesa rapidly followed across the bridge behind Sierra, feeling Pearl behind her and Elazul taking up the rear. She did not need to be told he was there; she just knew, he never growing closer nor falling behind, and always, always the same sense of unease radiating from him.

Or maybe that was from _her_?

How could she be otherwise? The wooden bridge, though wide, creaked disconcertingly with every step, and below, the river of flames licked upwards, not touching but giving off enough heat that she wondered if, in fact, wood could spontaneously combust.

She was tempted to turn back towards Elazul, but he had his own responsibilities; he had his guardian. She stopped herself in mid-thought. Why did she have the urge to run to him? This was her problem, and hers alone.

He didn't have to be here at all, but for some reason, he, and Pearl, had chosen to. She remembered her mother's words. _"We only have ourselves to depend on."_ Why, then, was she acting like a little girl? She forced herself instead to focus on Sierra, the dragoon determinedly now crossing onto the front stairs, before turning to wait. _There was one who wasn't losing herself to self-pity_, Ariesa thought, silently chiding herself.

The two Jumi joined them on the front steps, the bridge behind them swaying gently, still remarkably intact. Taking a deep breath, Ariesa opened the door before anyone could tell her no.

------------------------------------

Pearl practically clung to his side as she took it all in; though after what she had done in the Underworld, Elazul found himself wondering how much she really needed his protection. He had been reluctant to bring her here, figuring she would just be another liability; but now he was surprised he had not noticed the change in her, even before them.

For the decades in which they had been knight and guardian, she had always looked to him to lead. And he had, even when he doubted, even when he was afraid, because it was what she needed. But now… her eyes were clearer, her expression more thoughtful, her entire demeanor more determined than the vulnerable and absent-minded girl who had been his partner for so long.

Was it Blackpearl? Was it something of Pearl herself? He was still unclear on the connection, unclear what was truth of the ghost Sandra had brought up at Leires, and woman he had met in the desert years before he met Pearl, a fellow Jumi who had set on him the path Sappho had nudged him towards. And he was even more confused on how this all involved Pearl, what was going on in her head now. Her core sang a low, sad song, but he found it impossible to identify what it might mean. And now was not the time to ask.

Ariesa had not looked his way since they entered, nor had the dragoon Sierra, the tall, silent hallways hushing them all, it seemed. That, and the flames roaring outside, sometimes slamming the windows with the full force of a thunderstorm, the glass rattling the only sound to break the silence as he worried one might shatter over them. Instinctively, he reached for Pearl's hand to pull her a little closer.

"The stairs." Sierra was the first one to speak. "Drakonis will be waiting at the top."

"Aren't they always?" Elazul lowered his sword and stretched his neck, craning it as if he could see something at the top of the grand staircase before them. "Would anything else be easy?"

"Then we go up," Ariesa added, with determination, and just as she was the first one through the door, now she was the first one marching up the stairs, then turning, expressionless. Pearl scuttled to join her, Elazul and Sierra following at a more stately pace.

Beyond them, wispy lights flitted across the hallway, and they rubbed at Elazul's mind. Something he should be remembering about them... but he shrugged it off, and stepped into the hallway where the others waited.

His foot met the floor, and it crumbled beneath them all.

------------------------------------

"Ow," Pearl mumbled, although she had been pretty well cushioned by Elazul, who had managed to grab her somehow during the plunge. With the result that she looked to be in much better shape than any of them. Thought replaced shock in her head, and she thought about those wisps of light that had been circling them before they fell. There was something about those wisps that resonated with her… like they were whispering to her, but she could not understand the words.

"Where are we?" asked Ariesa.

"How should I know?" replied Sierra, not angrily. "A basement of some sort."

That much was obvious; it was cold and damp, insulated from the heat that enclosed the rest of the castle. Ariesa sat up gingerly, pulling her legs to her chest and clenching her muscles briefly. Some bruises were sure to appear, but for the most part, she appeared to still be in one piece. "It was a vain hope," she told the dragoon. She pulled herself to her feet, and began to explore.

Suddenly, she understood, as clear as if someone had spoken right in front of her. _There is light within the darkness._ And behind the words, a sensation, a thin trail that spoke to her, suddenly clear as day. It was the same way that Mekiv had directed to her, that the Tower of Leires had led her to the top – a trickle of Mana that the others did not seem to notice, much less understand. Balance, shattering and reforming, and her core and soul sensing every bit of it.

"I can lead us through," she announced hesitantly, and the others looked at her in surprise.

"Pearl…" Elazul began, but she tried to sent some of what she could feel to his core, Jumi to Jumi. It was enough. His eyebrows rose slightly, and he nodded to show her he understood.

She took a few steps towards that pull, the others shuffling into formation behind her.

She found her feet leading them through the basement, and the rise in temperature gave her hope that she was indeed going in the right direction. Orange light could be seen flickering up ahead, and they stepped into a new chamber where one staircase promisingly looked to lead upwards and out.

The stairs themselves were another matter. It opened up to a ledge visible above, but between them and that ledge, it overlooked a gaping maw of flames, and the stairs themselves were not nearly as wide nor with the reassuring barricades of the stairs circumventing Leires.

The foursome just stood and stared for a moment, no one particularly eager to venture onto the treacherous path. "Looks like it's the only way out," Elazul said glumly.

"Unless we can develop a way to fly, I think you may be right," Sierra affirmed.

Pearl, meanwhile, had stretched out one small foot to test the first step, then placed it more firmly and stepped up to the second, then the third. Elazul gasped slightly.

Pearl turned to press her back against the wall. "It's… it's more stable than it looks," she told her Knight, and the others. "I think… if you stay on this side… it won't let you fall."

"Perhaps you are right," suggested Sierra. "Drakonis is far too arrogant to miss his chance to confront us directly, but putting doubt in our minds certainly suits."

Elazul just shrugged. "Whatever." He followed his guardian's example, Pearl now about a dozen stairs up.

------------------------------------

Sierra and Ariesa merely looked at each other, and the dragoon motioned her forward. Taking a deep breath, she nodded, and stepped out over the lake of fire.

It wasn't as bad as she thought. It was _worse_. The fire reached high enough to heat her boots without actually burning, the skin underneath feeling uncomfortably warm and flushed, and every time one errant flame nearly singed the leather, she had to suppress the urge to flinch back lest she lose her balance. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sierra whap back her bushy tail after it had been nearly singed once again.

And it only got worse as they went up, and the descent to the flames below grew greater. She wished with all her might that she could avoid looking _down_, but she had to watch every placement of her foot on the inches-wide steps. Finally, she resorted to counting off steps, one two, three… focusing only on one at a time, twenty-one, twenty-two… just to keep going, eighty-six, eighty-seven, eighty-eight…

It was at two-hundred something that she saw no new steps waiting for her, and cautiously turned to her left. The steps had opened up into a small landing, not enormous, but plenty of room for four people to stand. She pulled back away from the edge with a sigh of relief.

Sierra joined them, the foursome now crowding a ledge that was much smaller than they had thought. Elazul reached to fling open the door, and they all eagerly milled towards it.

Creatures skittered towards them by the dozen as they entered, monsters with shapes twisted by the convoluted energy of the fortress. Disembodied horse heads, spindly wooden dolls, ghostly faces surrounded by flame; Ariesa slashed her sword through one of the latter, and smiled as it the weapon connected, sending the thing crumpling to the floor where it promptly disappeared.

Elazul and Sierra had neatly moved into formation as well, the three of them neatly surrounding Pearl, who only looked around wide-eyed. Pearl called their directions forward and upwards as the fighters led, one wave dying off and giving them a moment's peace before another set descended on them. The skilled warriors easily made their way through the onslaught, each barely a challenge and only their numbers making them a nuisance.

"Look out!" Pearl cried, and they looked to where she pointed. A trio of dragons approached them, all the size of a human, two landbound lumbering towards them, another held aloft by wide, scaly wings.

Ariesa's stomach dropped at the idea of having to kill another dragon, but she steeled herself. _These are no dragons of knowledge, no eternal creatures, just garden-variety monsters of Drakonis's creation_, she reasoned with herself. Even if they were a little larger than normal.

One of the flightless ones swiped at her, but Elazul was there in an instant, and his sword drove deeply into the dragon's thick hide, sending bluish-black blood pouring to the floor below. The monster screamed, and turned to the one that had hurt it.

Sierra had taken on the other land dragon, leaving Ariesa face-to-face with the angry figure of the sky dragon. Gripping her weapon, she suddenly found her anger boiling over, and she glared at the creature before her, pouring all her fury into her sword.

The creature fluttered backwards in surprise at the sudden onslaught that greeted it, the sword catching the orange glow of the flames outside as it nicked and cut. Ariesa felt claws reaching for her, barely grazing her skin as she dodged by pure instinct, her sword finally striking home at the base of the dragon's wing, cleaving it almost completely from the rest of the monster's body.

It squealed the painful sound of a dying animal as it _thunked_ against the castle's stone floor, its one good wing flailing uselessly as it frantically tried to right itself. Ariesa noticed those things only in a distant corner of her mind, raising her sword above her head with both hands, and as the opening appeared, she plunged it down and into the dragon's heart. It convulsed once, twice, then was still, its head dropping backwards as more of that dark blood ran out of its mouth.

Waves of dizziness swept over Ariesa, and a hint of nausea as her battle-anger faded, and she found herself almost gasping for breath as she fell to her knees by the dragon's corpse. Sierra appeared by her side, her knives dripping with ore of that midnight blood.

She stared at the glassy eyes of the dragon's corpse, forcing her breath to return to normal, but her heart still pounded in her chest. "It's not disappearing," she asked plaintively. "Why isn't it disappearing? Why won't it go away?"

Sierra's eyes were filled with sympathy. "It is not a creature of Mana. You did nothing wrong," she said, offering her hand. Ariesa accepted it, and slowly strength both inner and outer seemed to flow back into her.

Elazul, meanwhile, had strode to the other side of the room, and now gazed up the staircase to where the white light of day seemed to fight with the light of the flames. "I think we're there," he noted carefully, and Ariesa steeled herself for what was to come.

------------------------------------

Sierra steeled herself as she grabbed the handle of the door, with a silent prayer to Vadise. She felt the barest answer, as if at a distance, as if Vadise could not reach through the fortress of Drakonis. Latching onto that slim sense of her dragon's presence, she threw open the door before doubt could take her.

The room opened to the sky above, dominated by an enormous stone carved from the rock of the fortress itself, it seemed. Drakonis, oddly, did not await them on that throne, but stood next to it, framed by the bright light of an ordinary day beyond. He did not seem surprised to see them, but neither did he seem pleased about it.

"Sierra," Drakonis practically spat out. "You never know when to quit."

"You dare to call yourself a Dragon of Knowledge?" Sierra retorted. "Born to protect order, you deny the bonds of life! You are truly despicable! By Vadise's order, I have come to slay you!"

"Born? Is that what Vadise told you?" Drakonis just laughed then. "I've never pretended to be a Dragon of knowledge. I have always been a dragon of power, a mage of destruction. I have been under the yoke of those dragons for hundreds of years, seeking a way out of my enslavement."

"And yet you enslave others so callously," Sierra replied, hands tensing on knives.

"It's the way it has always been." Drakonis glared at her, fanaticism in his eyes. "Didn't your dragon teach you that yourself? Mana is limited, and we have to fight for every bit we have. Why even waste time with the Goddess, when we can take power here, and now?"

"That's what has been attempted for hundreds of years, and it's gotten us absolutely nowhere… Civilizations crushed, lives lost, history gone."

"Not my problem." He grinned evilly. "I've learned a lot, down here in the Underworld. The place has its own power, you see, whether the demons control it or not, and it was the Sword that helped me survive it, that brief encounter with Mana just enough. I had the Mana Sword, if for only a moment, before the Archdemon stole it, and my life as well. But I learn."

Sierra remained silent, her eyes darting everywhere at once as she gauged the scene, openings, liabilities, the positions of herself and her allies. Ariesa was holding back, behind and to the left, just as alert, and Drakonis rambled on crazily. "You see, Anise had the right of it. Mana, by itself , is a pathetic and vulnerable power. She realized Underworld magic, the magic of death, had the greatest strength. The difference is, she realized Mana could be used as a conduit to bring that power to fruition." He motioned around him. "See what I did, with my pretty Stones? Why even bother with the Sword anymore? The ancient Goddess fought back, but the new Goddess is so vulnerable, all I have to do is beat her to the Stones, and she won't have a chance when she gets here. If she ever does."

"Were you on Anise's side?" challenged the dragoon, now in a cold fury.

Drakonis laughed. "My dear Sierra, I have never been on anyone's side but my own." _Vadise said as much_, Sierra told herself. "But at times, our… interests… coincided. I taught her mages to summon Wyrms, but they were too fearful themselves. Had Anise been around, had she not been killed by the seventh moon… things might have been different. She was never one to shy away from power."

"And it drove her mad," Pearl said quietly, entering.

Drakonis looked at her. "You again, Jumi? What would you know about it? You were not around when the Tree was destroyed."

Pearl paused. "I know…" She shuddered slightly. "More than I want to." She took a few hesitant steps forward, as if Drakonis did not bother her at all.

Drakonis flinched slightly, but recovered himself. "What do you think you are going to do? Cry my pain away?" He cackled. "Of course, you have no tears, do you? No wonder Jumi souls are trickling through my domain, even though they do not stay long."

"But she does not have a knight," came a voice, and Elazul stepped out of the shadows behind her.

Drakonis at first barely glanced at Elazul, then did a double take, as if seeing something he had failed to notice before. "_You_!" he roared, eyes flaring bright red for a moment.

"Huh?" Elazul asked, startled.

The dragon – if he could be truly called that – was overtaken by mad rage. "No, not _her_," he roared. "_She_, the one who burned me, who caused me so much pain…"

"Who are your referring to?" questioned Sierra. Elazul drew his sword, casually, instinctively, stepping between Drakonis and Pearl.

"I will burn you in return!" Drakonis raged, his voice trailing off into a harsh, guttural drawl as his body stretched, tore, reshaped as Larc's had done. "I will take your lives for my nourishment!" His neck lengthened, his skin turned red, and a snout grew out of his face. Enormous wings lifted and flapped experimentally, and the dragon lunged forward, flames spewing from deep within his throat.

Sierra crashed into Ariesa, knocking her to the ground, and beyond saw Elazul covering Pearl in much the same way. She felt a surge of power from Vadise make its way through the shattered Mana around them.

The flames rose to consume the throne room, first reducing curtains to ash, then burning into the stone itself. Ariesa coughed, and the throne room dissolved in fire.

------------------------------------

This was not the same as finding herself on the rocky plateau. Ariesa found herself surprisingly free of pain, and leapt up to her feet.

It might have been a beautiful place – green grass, an aqua-blue pool beyond – has it not been for the crazily striated sky above, a mad mix of purples, blacks, and blues that was agonizing to look at.

Sierra answered the question before Ariesa had a chance to ask. "Vadise could not pull us back," the dragoon said, "so she tied us to Drakonis, to wherever he was going. Otherwise, our bodies would be nothing but ash right now, and our souls en route to the Underworld."

"And our cores waiting to be collected," added Elazul.

Suddenly, the ground shook beneath them, and flames exploded all around them, only to splinter away from them once again. Before them, the enormous, contorted form of a crimson dragon appeared before them.

"Drakonis," Pearl breathed.

"What makes you think you are _worthy_ of using my true name?!" roared the dragon. "To you, worms, I am the Dragon Emperor. And without the Goddess here to save your worthless lives, you will bow down to _me_!"

Ariesa didn't bother to answer as she dove into action. She raised her sword, then suddenly leapt to the side as flames roared down on her as they had in the fortress, burning the grass beneath where she had been standing.

"Fire is the beginning, and the end," the dragon announced. "Clearing the garbage, the wreckage away, so something can be born once again."

"It will not be you who is born," answered Sierra's voice. Drakonis turned, but she was already in motion, her knives spinning impossibly fast, tearing into the dragon's hide as easily as Ariesa had torn into the smaller dragon in the castle. Drakonis wailed, and Sierra neatly backflipped onto his neck, clinging on with surprising agility and clambering up to his head.

"An eye for an eye," she told the dragon. "This one's for Vadise!" Her free hand plunged its weapon into Drakonis's red eye, collapsing the orb as the sticky vitreous humor leaked out, and his head whipped up, Sierra barely keeping hold.

"Elazul, now!" Sierra shouted, and from where he had been waiting, the Jumi knight dove forward to plunge his sword upwards into the dragon's exposed belly.

Drakonis screamed, and the sky dragon's final shrieks echoed in Ariesa's head, those cries of intense, desperate pain leaving her both terrified and infuriated. Drakonis flung his head in the opposite direction, finally shaking Sierra off, and the dragoon hit the ground with a sickening thud, lying in the ground, unmoving.

Elazul and Ariesa stared in shock for a split second, as Pearl ran over to her. "She's alive, she's breathing!" the Jumi woman shouted, and Ariesa felt herself lose control completely.

"Elazul, out of my way!" she yelled, and to her surprise, he complied, running out of the dragon's reach. She gripped the hilt of her sword in fury, eyes fixed on the enemy before her. "Over here!" she called.

Drakonis twisted his neck to lean in close and focus his one remaining eye on her, and then… of all things he _laughed_. There was no mirth in it; it was a sinister, grating sound that seemed to screech on her very soul. "You have been baptized," his voice told her. "You are not allowed to stand against me."

"That's a lie!" she shouted, and struck.

Her sword… _slowed_… in midair, then stopped. Elazul shouted something in her direction, but she couldn't make out the words as the tainted Mana that had cut off her attack began to surround her, to crush her, the pressure all over her body. She gasped for breath slightly as it began to constrict her.

"You were so easy to manipulate, to rope in. So naïve, so clueless," Drakonis told her, watching her as she fell forward, tumbling onto her knees before him. Her sword clattered uselessly out of her hands. "You must be pretty stupid," he taunted.

Sierra's hands were suddenly on her, and the pressure eased somewhat. "Hold on, hold on," the dragoon urged. She was limping, and lacking the strength she had before, she herself injured and Ariesa knew it was only her dragon holding her up.

"You cannot hold it off forever, even with Vadise's help," Drakonis told her smugly. As if to emphasize the point, Ariesa felt a strangling hold around her windpipe, and she gasped for breath.

"How could you!" Sierra cried, trying to pull Ariesa away as if simple physical distance would help. Spots appeared in her eyes. _Escad_, some distant thought appeared. _He tried to warn me._

"This was nothing of me," Drakonis said impassively. "It is the rules of the Underworld. The baptized – the dead, or those living who walk the Underworld as honorary spirits - are not permitted to fight one another. It is Olbohn's way of keeping the peace."

Elazul looked towards the two, Drakonis's massive tail blocking him from running to them. Every time he moved, that tail whipped around to keep him dodging and defending.

"Is it true?" he called to them. Ariesa didn't know how she was able to nod.

She felt her stomach drop at the look that crossed his face. It was half-mad with fear, pain, and a hundred other emotions, and without thinking, he drove his sword into Drakonis's tail.

The backlash was immediate. One of Drakonis's enormous claws _struck_, aiming for his already-injured core. A jolt of energy was sent with the blow, and Elazul screamed in pain, Ariesa wincing despite it all as she felt the dragon's corrupted Mana mix with his unbalanced core. He fell to the ground, clutching both hands to his core, his body shaking on the border of full convulsions.

"I can reach for your core, Jumi, now that I have located its resonance," Drakonis told him. Elazul could only look up at the dragon with gaping eyes, and Ariesa struggled as her bonds waxed and waned, but never freed her. Drakonis's voice grew quiet, menacing. "Just a little more of that, and your core will shatter. A waste, yes, but I cannot have you standing in my way as you did so long ago."

"I… didn't…" Elazul managed to force out, and Ariesa felt her own willpower giving out as he suffered before her. Sierra was weakening as well, her augmented strength running out.

"No!" came Pearl's voice.

Drakonis regarded the forgotten Jumi irritably. She stood some distance away, with defiance on her face. "What? What do you think you're going to do? You cannot heal him, your inheritance is gone. Stay back, little one, and you can leave here alive."

Pearl jutted her small nose in the air, and when she spoke, it barely sounded like her, a dignified, regal tone. "My inheritance is more than healing. You should recognize it, of all," she announced, proudly, her body beginning to shine, suffused with a white light. Within that light, colors began to swirl, all the colors of the rainbow, of Mana, coalescing into a grayish swirl that churned angrily, then suddenly shattered to reveal what was hidden within.

Lady Blackpearl stood to face Drakonis, raising herself to her full height. The black pillar of her hammer was in her hand, the dull black of the Lorimar iron that made up its head broken by its casing of Lorant silver, it sparkling enough to reflect the red of Drakonis's scales on its wicked-looking surface.

"You were saying?" she asked, with exaggerated casualness.

The dragon stumbled back, surprised, afraid, or possibly a little of both. "Who are you?"

"Try, Dragon Emperor," Blackpearl replied. "Try to piece it altogether. You may not know me, but you should figure it out well enough." Her core gleamed with a silvery light. Behind her, Elazul lay still, the connection to Drakonis broken, and even Ariesa felt the Mana waver around her. Sierra held her tightly as they both looked on weakly.

Blackpearl struck, her hammer smashing bones wherever it made contact with a force that could barely be believed. The dragon seemed off kilter, fighting only with claws and teeth. The Jumi harried him, untold years of experience driving her with a grace Ariesa could not begin to hope to emulate.

And it was working. Drakonis, perhaps unconsciously, stepped backwards, as his enemy calmly drove on.

And then Elazul was with her, fighting beside her, his sword diving in as he worked around Blackpearl's implacable advance. The dragon showed signs of emergent panic, and frantically spewed Mana-powered flames over the attacking Jumi.

That was the moment Blackpearl had been waiting for, Ariesa realized. She smiled, and Ariesa felt that same sense of Mana being _twisted_ as she had used to free Larc, but a hundred times stronger. She realized what it was; Larc had done the same, only without the purity she could feel from Blackpearl now. _She's cutting Drakonis off from his Stone, the Stone that keeps him alive,_ she realized.

Drakonis was wielding far too much power to survive otherwise, and as the Stone was severed from him, he _shrunk_, parts of his body producing deafening, fiery explosions as his body collapsed, the dragon finally disappearing in a shower of sparkling motes.

Lady Blackpearl looked down with an expression of intense satisfaction, as Elazul only looked at her, puzzled. "That is how a creature of Mana disappears."

Ariesa gasped as Mana whipped away from her, she suddenly free at last. She reached up to find sweat soaking her brow. "It's alright," Sierra told her. "He is dead. You are free of him."

"But am I free of the Underworld?" she asked. Sierra had no answer.

"How can he be a creature of Mana, when he was evil?" Elazul questioned.

"Good and evil are not in it. Those are the labels we assign to things that happen within the Goddess's plan," Blackpearl replied, not tearing her eyes from the spot where Drakonis had disappeared.

She wobbled slightly, one hand reaching for her core. For a moment, Ariesa worried she was going to disappear the same way, but light only seemed to run in rivulets off her, leaving Pearl once again in her place. Pearl shook herself slightly, but she had the look of simple exhaustion rather than injury. Elazul looked at her with quiet concern.

Pearl laughed self-consciously. "I guess…" she began. "I don't know how I did that, exactly. It took a lot of energy, though." Around them, the glade quietly faded away to leave them in the throne room once again.

The flames had calmed somewhat, but that somehow gave Ariesa more of a sense of unease than ever. She _felt_ it before she heard or saw it, and Elazul looked around abruptly.

"The Mana of the castle is splintering apart," he said sharply. "We have to get out of here, now."

"Drakonis's power is gone," Sierra said grimly. "It may be the Stone itself fighting back."

They ran back through the passages, Ariesa hoping that Pearl could find the way back out as easily as she had found the way in. Blood-red rocks began to fall around them as the walls shook with a deafening sound. Cracks, then fissures, appeared in the walls, suddenly darting across the floor before them, and once again they found themselves crashing into the basement as before.

This was not the same room as before; this was a single, isolated cavern. Ariesa looked on in panic for an exit. None appeared, as the rest of the floor high above collapsed around them.

Pearl had collapsed as well, now back to the small girl they all knew, clinging to Elazul with both desperation and exhaustion. Panicked, she had thrown her arms around Elazul, as the room shattered around them.

Sierra was murmuring some prayer to the Goddess, and Ariesa felt some mad part of her getting ready to make peace with her impending doom, when a figure appeared out of thin air. Ariesa's eyes grew wide as she realized who it was.

"_Rubens_?" she asked with incredulity.

Rubens did not acknowledge her greeting. "No time. Bahamut says you must get out, and I am only able to grab a little of the Stone's power to lead you. Come with me!" he ordered, his voice taking on a tone of fiery confidence she had not heard in it before, but seemed absolutely natural to him.

The Jumi led them down a narrow tunnel she could have sworn was not there before, and she ran after Pearl and Elazul, Sierra's footsteps loud enough to reassure her that she was there as well. The earth around them shook as they fled, they stumbling through near-total blackness towards a faint light up ahead.

Near the end, the slope tilted upwards to become nearly more wall than hill before breaking above ground once again. Rubens, a spirit, led upwards easily, but Elazul had to boost the lightweight Pearl back up to the surface. He strained to boost himself up, then lent Ariesa a hand as she struggled, a quick push from Sierra finally letting her up, and the two of them reaching down together to pull Sierra onto the welcome desolation of the land where they had began. The castle was visible in the distance now only as an irregular pile of rock.

They were just in the nick of time, as beyond them, a substantial section of the plateau collapsed. The ground did not merely sink, but _fell_ into the valley hundreds of feet below, leaving a sharp cliff where their escape passage just had been.

As if finally released, the roar of the earth settled, leaving only the sharp breaths of the agitated party to fill the silence as they contemplated the ruin. Ariesa could feel her heart beating wildly, erratically, as the beginnings of shock set in.

"Drakonis's fortress fell back to be absorbed in the Underworld," Sierra observed with all of her regained composure.

Elazul regarded Rubens with mixed emotions. "And what happens to you?" he asked the older Jumi man.

"This is the last I will do," Rubens said with a sign. "I was choosing to hang on, hoping for my chance to see Diana once more. But though she is not alive, neither is she dead, and I can hang on no longer."

"You won't fight?" Elazul inquired, with none of the brash passion he had when talking to Rubens in Gato.

"No. I am ready to give in. Yet I wanted to give something, after I met you, Elazul, in Gato… It made me realized once again what the Jumi _are_, that we do not exist merely to be stolen. I hope you will be able to do what I could not."

He turned to Pearl, his eyes sizing her up. "Pearl… that is your name?" he greeted her.

"Yes," she said politely. Rubens seemed oddly puzzled, but paused to stare into her eyes, his expression… confused.

"You are a guardian, are you not? Elazul's guardian," he said, pronouncing the last words oddly. She nodded. "You could become Clarius."

She hung her head. "I could – if I had any tears."

"The point is," Rubens told her, "that you are willing. Remember that."

"What of Larc?" Sierra inquired, concern in her eyes. "Is he in the Underworld as well?"

Rubens looked troubled. "His souls, and those of the dragons, were swallowed by Drakonis. But the connection was imperfect, and he is neither alive nor dead, trapped in a sort of limbo in between. Part of Mana still, but not of this world. The dragon's curse, that only pure Mana can save him from."

"A curse." Sierra's voice was flat. "Could…" she began, hesitating. "Could Jumi tears revive him, then? Heal him?"

Rubens thought that for a moment. "Probably," he finally admitted, "were there any tears to be had." Sierra looked stricken, and his expression softened. "I promise you, my lady, if a way can be found, I will see to it myself that your brother is returned to you." The dragoon looked mollified at that.

"What about me?" asked Ariesa. "Am I cursed as well?"

"You, Ariesa - " Rubens began carefully, "cannot be unbaptized. That is as eternal, as death itself." Elazul drew breath at that. "But there is no _control_ to it anymore, as the one who instigated it is dead, and the connection broken. Drakonis will not be back."

"You sure?" she challenged, hiding her own fear.

"I am," Rubens replied. "You have access to the Underworld now. That may be useful to you someday." He turned to Elazul. "I have to thank you, for bringing me hope again, when I thought hope was nothing but a curse." Elazul nodded, one hand touching his core, and as they felt a last surge of power, Rubens was gone.

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Vadise turned to Tiamat. "It is done," she told the younger dragon. "You must now take the Fire Stone as well as Water."

The small blue dragon solemnly nodded agreement, and Vadise left to join her dragoon, her mind already on the things she would have to discuss later with Bahamut.

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That last burst from the Mana Stone whooshed them far from the dry, hot surface of the desert, leaving them to find themselves sprawled by the tombstone outside of Domina, and Ariesa dearly hoped she was done with warping, falling, tumbling, crashing, and generally finding herself in unexpected places for the time being.

She turned her head, setting her gaze on that enormous grave marker, feeling as if it had been a lifetime ago she had last been here. It didn't look quite the same in the daylight; the carvings looked almost at peace.

Perhaps they were.

Ariesa sensed a presence above her and opened her eyes to see Larc, eyes concerned. "You okay?" he asked her.

"I think so," she said, pulling herself to her feet. Pearl and Elazul rose groggily together, and Sierra was already standing, waiting solemnly as Larc walked over to her.

"Larc," Sierra breathed. "You cannot leave me again. All of my history is wrapped up in you."

"No matter, Sierra," the younger brother replied with sincerity. "Whatever the cause, I have sinned, and I must endure the burden."

"You always would make me worry," she said tenderly. "But you would never acknowledge it." Larc grinned at that. Sierra reached out to touch her brother, and he disappeared.

Sierra fell to one knee, making the sign of the tree. Vadise's ephemeral form appeared before her. "I never even got to say goodbye," she moaned.

"Be appeased, Sierra," Vadise replied. "His bond to his dragon is broken, so whatever, wherever he will be, he is free." Sierra listened, but it didn't stop the tears that began to course down her face.

Ariesa saw the dragoon's pain, and felt those tears triggering her own.

"Ariesa!" Elazul's voice called to her, but her body was already shaking with the convulsions of her own sobs, finally helpless to stop them. She fell to the ground, tears of pain, pride, and hate running running rivulets down her face.


	41. Secrets: Revenge

**Author's Note: **V-day special! Pain, pride, hate… and fluff. Barely made this update in time, and am now running late for work… catch you later…

Happy Singles Awareness Day!

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**41. Secrets: Revenge**

Alexandra, knight of the Half-Lucidia, knew better to present herself as sulky.

She forced herself to straighten up, though she couldn't quite bring herself to crack a smile yet. She was known for a wicked and somewhat inappropriate sense of humor, and her smile would have been completely out of place at the raising of the new Clarius.

So she maintained her place to the right of the Clarius's throne, a large, bed-like object intended to provide peace, clarity and comfort for the one of their own who they admired, for the time being, as something like a goddess. And Florina, fragile as she was, would need it.

_Did Blackpearl realize how young Florina was, and how delicate? _She looked across to the other side at the intimidating Lady Blackpearl. That was what was getting under her skin, having to give over her guardian and friend to another's care. To someone she didn't entirely trust with it, no less. _As if she wasn't good enough._

Alexandra had tried, she really had, even approached Blackpearl in the days leading up to this, but to no avail. First of all, she had been told curtly that only a knight of the full Lucidia could be guardian to the Clarius. Not that there were more than a handful of those, the oldest ones, clinging to their little clique and forgetting those around them, as if they were the only Jumi that mattered. Their rank was based, pathetically, on merely their age, which, when you came down to it, was only the age of the stone, since there was no real power to the stone anyway.

Hundreds of years had hardened Blackpearl more than her core, she was an empty shell, as Alexandra saw it. She was a stone puppet, the core the only part of her that even breathed of life and kindness, as lifeless as the dolls Anuella had made in the wars.

"She's too young," Alexandra had finally shouted at Lady Blackpearl, to shocked looks from the Jumi on one of the city's corridors. "She'll be used up. Why don't you take her place, if you care so much for the Jumi?"

Blackpearl only set a stone gaze on her at that. "She is Jumi, and has the same responsibilities as the rest of us. She is willing to take on the role. It is only you who object to it." She pointed one finger right at the younger woman, a stern look on her face. "You were not there for the wars, Alexandra. The Lucidia were. We have earned our place."

_Like hell they had_. Maybe the Lucidia had been in those wars, when the Jumi were still called the "race of friendship", to heal, but now… it was under their leadership that the Jumi had become a race that _took_ rather than _gave_, a race that clung to life by squeezing it out of others of their kind, the compassionate few who could still shed tears. They were no longer sparkling jewels, they were dead rocks walking around pretending they were alive still, and she wondered sometimes if that was all she had become as well.

If it wasn't for Florina… she might have given up on her race a long time ago. She was the embodiment of everything the Jumi should be.

And she was the only one left who could cry.

Had Alexandra been able to cry herself, she would have shed tears for the woman to whom she was so close. Florina was willing, yes, as Blackpearl had said; that was the beauty of her, her overflowing kindness, that drew Alexandra with everything she wished she could feel herself. But she would suffer for those things, and Alexandra could not be convinced that was right, that was what the Jumi were meant to be.

The knight was brought back to the present by a subtle hum that was of Mana flowing… and she knew what was going to happen next. The bond, _her_ bond, to Florina, twisted, contorted, and she braced herself. The tension built, until that final _snap_ as it broke, tearing away from her, overwhelming Alexandra not with the intensity of pain that came with it, but rather a profound sense of loss. She leaned against the walls for support, the eyes of the Jumi no longer on her.

It was over. There was a new Clarius. Alexandra was suddenly grateful for the crowds that flooded Florina with congratulations, as it let her slip away, unnoticed and unneeded.

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Blackpearl was patiently unfazed by all that was going around her. They had already spoken the vows that gave the guardianship of Florina to her, though Alexandra had practically choked hers out. No matter, at least she did what was necessary.

The redheaded knight had hit a nerve. Florina _was _too young; really, she had been too young to even become Jumi, and even though that had nothing to do with her, it made Blackpearl feel guilty about the Jumi, about what she had set in motion so many years before. But Florina was also intelligent, and caring, and soothing, things the Jumi needed to help keep them together after the centuries of hunting. Hopefully, she would be able to handle the pressure.

She watched as each of the nine-hundred odd Jumi in the city knelt to the Clarius, to give her a little bit of the energy in their own core, as was the custom. The healing many had contributed during the war had taken a toll, and now… there was only a limited pool of Mana in their collective cores. The Jumi could, quite literally, run out. Lady Blackpearl hoped fervently they could survive until the Goddess's return, when Mana would no longer be scarce, and Goddess willing, the Jumi could cry again.

Now, of course, only one could. Florina had that unique openness of the heart that was found among few, Jumi or otherwise; something Blackpearl felt she had closed off herself so long ago. Her tears… were the only way the Jumi could survive.

Rumors had already begun to travel from the north, carried with the few Jumi who were permitted to leave by Diana – as if many even wanted to leave the safety of Etansel. They told of a new emperor, one who had unnatural powers of magic, possessive of those powers and eager to grab more.

It reminded her… of the wars so many centuries before. What would the Jumi do? Would they heal the wounded as they once had? _Could_ they? As long as they had Florina's tears, the Jumi could not be destroyed… but that was a heavy weight to put on the shoulders of one young girl.

Diana greeted her, welcoming her, the leader of the Jumi showing the pain she had suffered through the centuries, her knowing blue eyes looking into Florina's brown ones still full of innocence, and Lady Blackpearl couldn't help but notice the contrast. Old and new, the history and future of the Jumi wrapped up in that one simple gesture.

The Clarius was the symbol of the Jumi. She was the embodiment of their hope.

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Alexandra was in no mood to celebrate. The sounds of the festivities that filled the Jumi city at the raising of their new Clarius followed her, as she crept away down the deserted glowing corridor into the shadows beyond, searching for some privacy.

As the light dimmed, she instinctively looked down, watching her core fade from green to the red-purple it always assumed in darkness. She happened to particularly enjoy that aspect of her core; it resonated with her soul. It had powers no one else could dream of; nor did they really know how far she had gone to get it. She lost herself for untold minutes in memories and imagination.

"Sandra," came a familiar voice. Only one person ever called her that.

She looked up, and Florina stood there, half-eclipsed in shadow, now wearing the overdone green robes of her new position. Alexandra couldn't help but think the robes and that heavy headdress wore her more than the new Clarius did them.

"Are you angry?" asked her old friend gently.

Alexandra didn't know how to answer that, exactly. " 'Angry' is way too simple," she said, suddenly vehement. "Diana and the Lucidia lose support every day, yet she continues on her path. And you want to be one of them, now!" Florina did not flinch under her friend's tone. "Clarius is the most precious, most perfect, the one with the most sparkle and shine. Do they even deserve you?"

Florina didn't look angry. She never did; no matter what, she would find the best in a person. "Why don't you find that answer yourself?"

"Why do you always say that?" Alexandra challenged.

"Because I have no real power to fix anything, really," Florina replied. "I maintain the balance as best I can. That's all we can do right now. We are Jumi," she continued, fondling the staff of the Clarius slightly. That, at least, seemed to suit her, a slender piece of wood encrusted with jewels into which Etansel's Mana had seeped into over the centuries. "We have the powers of Mana, the powers of the earth and life, to lead us back home."

Alexandra turned away. "I don't know if this is my home anymore," she replied to her oldest friend. "I might leave for a while."

"Some do that, nowadays. I'm sure Diana will let you," Florina replied. "I will be sorry to see you go."

"I don't really want to go alone," Alexandra returned.

A long moment of silence resulted, one woman wishing for an answer that she knew the other would not give.

"You never did tell me how you became Jumi," Alexandra leveled at her friend.

"You never asked," replied Florina calmly. She paused a minute, and began the story.

"I _bought_ this," she said, lifting one hand to a pale green core clearer than Diana's diamond ever had been. "Sort of. My parents had a jewelry shop in Wendel, during the time when it was losing its place as the Holy City to Gato. I wanted to be a priestess, but Wendel's Temple was already in decline. I trained as far as I could, though, and when this appeared, that training told me immediately what it was. Not someone else's core – this was before the hunting began – but a piece of the real Mana Stone. So I saved my wages from working in my parents shop, and bought it, for a lot less than I think they knew it was worth." She brushed her core again. "You know the rest."

"What did your parents say?" Alexandra asked.

Florina spoke softly. "Well, once it's done, there's nothing much to say about it, is there?"

Alexandra turned away. The story of the core was the most personal a Jumi had; most considered their lives to have started there, the day they found their core and took on a Jumi name. Florina silently asked the same question of her, and she felt obligated to return the intimacy.

"Granz," Alexandra replied. "You know the Mana cultists?" She looked up, and Florina nodded.

"The ones who have been preaching it is their job to restore Mana, that they will become the tree?" Florina asked. "The ones who tried to cry to give us tears back, and turned to stone themselves?"

"The same," Alexandra nodded hastily. "My mother was a Navarrese immigrant in the city, and my father a native, and in those days the cult _was_ the city. Most of its members weren't believers, exactly, just pragmatists, but there were enough of them around that you couldn't help but learn a few things. They know more than you might realize, and they told me how to find _this_." She motioned to her own core, catching some of the ambient light to glitter green, light but still darker than Florina's pale core.

Florina knew what she was saying; despite her innocent and youthful face, she was wise enough to understand a great many things, and she was wasted on what the Jumi had become. "You will make the decisions you need to make, Alexandra," she concluded, and turned lightly away, drifting off to the people who owned her now.

Alexandra took a step back, watching her core fade to blood purple once again as Florina left, and with it she sank into the darker parts of herself.

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She had been a long time out of the Jumi city.

How long, Alexandra could not say, but years, perhaps a decade or two. Jumi always lost track of time, out of sheer necessity if no other motivation.

For a time, she had wandered the world, unsure of who or what she was looking for, but over time, she started to feel a _pull_. First subtle, then growing stronger, as she felt herself inexorably drawn to the strange forest where she had found her core, hundreds of years before.

The "Jungle of Illusion", it had been called, and despite the ravages of time on the rest of the world, it looked as if it had not changed at all. It seemed to have a kind of Mana of its own, to occupy some sort of spot between the dimensions, someplace where ordinary rules did not apply, where identity itself was unstable.

She touched her core involuntarily, it resonating almost as if it was speaking with the jungle, and it gave her chills. It made her feel as if she was wobbling on an unstable edge, not knowing which way she would be pushed.

Reality became… thinner… as she made her way through the trees. She had long since given up on finding her own way out; the forest seemed determined to send her where _it_ wanted her to go.

The trees abruptly let her stumble into a clearing dominated by a palace, a structure she had not caught the slightest glimpse of before. Sandra had to reach out a couple times with her core to reassure herself that she was not, in fact, imagining things, then set to wondering, where, in fact she was.

It was not the city that had been Mindas; that had long since been reduced to a decayed ruin. This palace seemed as unchanged as the forest itself, sun refracting through stained-glass windows to prism into rainbows.

The palace did not seem to object to her entry, and she stepped into the courtyard. The tall walls shaded it from the light, and in the center stood a time-worn stone totem, capped by a grotesque carving of a skull. Instinctively she touched the core that now shone purple, here behind the sun.

"An ancient representation of the Goddess," she said out loud, "an acknowledgement of Her darker side that many wish to deny."

"And you do not?" cracked a voice into her thoughts.

She wheeled, to see a grotesque, stooping creature, like some dug-up corpse. Her first instinct was to flee, realizing with a sinking feeling that she was all alone. She backed up, finally bumping against the totem, and as she looked up to see that image of the Goddess's deadlier face, she remembered she was a Jumi Knight, and found her courage.

"Who are you?" she demanded, shouting. "Some spirit from the Underworld? Leave me alone, Jumi do not belong to the Underworld!"

"Not the Underworld," the creature said, a voice like bone scraping on itself. "The _Otherworld_. The place beyond the stars, beyond the Goddess."

He – at least, she assumed it was a _he_, though gender seemed almost to be a moot point – approached her slowly, a trace of interest, a hint of caution. The latter surprised her, she wondering what was so threatening about her.

"The dark stone," he intoned in that chilling, screeching voice. As he drew closer, she saw his eyes were _dark_; not black, but a sort of emptiness that threatened to pull her in, and beyond, in the depths of that blackness, sparkle like stars that almost seemed to be screaming to escape. "It draws me… yet I cannot come near, not in the way I want."

One lizard-scaled hand stretched out for her core, and Alexandra recoiled instinctively. Just as he had said, that clawed appendage neared, and began to tremble, stopping some distance short as if it could go no further. She let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding.

"There is no other Jumi like you." Alexandra could only mutely nod. "But… you don't understand it, do you? The _power_ it has inside. Darkness, chaos, all wrapped into one. Power that can overtake you, if you are not strong enough."

_Powers_. She thought back to the claiming of her core, her arduous journey for days through the jungle centuries before, it leading her in circles before finally allowing her to find the piece of the Dark Stone that had become her life.

Oddly, she found herself thinking of Lady Blackpearl, and she felt her anger rise at the memory. Now, though, it was the woman's core she remembered, that gray pearl that sometimes swirled with darkness as if to cover up what the woman was hiding underneath. Her own core… those powers of dark were far stronger, she had always known. It was one of many things she had learned in Granz.

"There is something you want," that grisly voice continued, "something you desire… something that was taken from you…" _Florina_, she thought, the memory paining, her, rising again after all the time she had spent pushing it down. "A jewel that sparkles. Tell me more about what you seek."

She felt her legs giving way beneath her, wishing she could cry with the pain she felt. "She was our hope, no matter what they called Rubens," she found herself babbling. "She is the only one who can still cry and care for others, who still has her heart in her core, who is not just a rock…" Florina had been the one she protected; Florina had been what gave her life meaning. "She is the only true Jumi…" Her mouth clamped shut, wondering if she had said too much.

The strange creature looked at her with something nearly approaching… compassion. "The Jumi," he pondered. "Closer to the Goddess than the fairies, than the dragons. Splintered, now, cutting through rock to make pathways, cutting through the Jumi themselves as they try to overcome the core, control it… They should be pulled close, close to the Sword, close to the route to the Goddess."

"We do not need the Goddess," Alexandra said proudly.

"In that, you are right. Why waste time there, when the cores themselves have so much power? The Jumi are a barrier to be overcome, a wall between us and that power. They can provide… anything, if put together."

"What are you saying?" she exclaimed.

"Do you want to know the powers of your core?" the creature asked mildly, the voice now almost tolerable. "The dark powers are some of the strongest, if one can survive them, as darkness creeps in, disillusionment, as one forgets how to use the light. But is you can survive that… in that chaos, there is the power to create, to shape. To shape emotion, to shape fear. To shape _yourself_, to regenerate, beyond simple healing. what you can access… the power to shape things. The power to shape emotion, shape fear. The power to regenerate, beyond simple healing. The power to shape how others see you, to conceal yourself, to conceal that you are Jumi. The power to join, to shape the Jumi into what they were meant to be. The Goddess shaped the world from this chaos, and so can you."

Sandra tensed, cautious, as he continued. "Think of it. The power of the Jumi fused together once again." She thought of the Lucidia, and Blackpearl, who had splintered the Jumi into pathetic remnants of what they once had been. "A thousand beautiful sparkles, joined once again, returned to the universe and Mana, enough power... to save the one you want."

Alexandra gasped, thinking he must have been reading her thoughts, and with a sharp stab of pain, she found herself… tempted. "What do you need from me?"

"You will gather for me the essence of the Jumi, feeding off their pain, pride, and hate that infect the Jumi, that will otherwise destroy them." His voice seemed to be drawing her in, pulling her with the things she dreamed of, to save Florina, save whatever might be left of what the Jumi truly were. "You will being them to me…"

Something inside her snapped. "Hunting," she said sharply, remembering how the pursuit of their cores had threatened the Jumi's very existence. "You want me to _hunt_ them." How could this be right, she asked herself, when that was the very thing that had torn the Jumi away from rest of the world?

"Is Florina not worth it?" he questioned her, and with a sinking feeling, she knew he was telling the truth.

"Why do you worry about Florina?" she asked hesitantly.

"Let us just say that it is a desire of us both to keep Florina alive," he replied. "Will you agree?"

Alexandra found herself nodding. "Very good," his voice said, no longer rasping but smooth as silk to her ears.

"Who are you?" she whispered reverently.

"I am a great many things, but for now, I am the Lord of Jewels." He laughed, and part of her shivered. "That does not matter to you. You will kneel before me now," and she felt herself obey, sinking to her knees. "I am your master, your king."

"My king," she repeated, sighing.

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It had been years, but still, no one questioned her return to the Jumi City. All the Jumi came home, eventually. She quietly reintegrated into the culture, with no one the wiser, no one able to tell any difference, even though she worried at first it was marked for all to see.

But it was indeed concealed. Her master had been true to his word.

She bided her time, firmly ensconced back in the life she had led for so long. Her one joy was being able to see Florina again; her friend had welcomed her back with open arms, welcomed her back to the Jumi and to _her_, though the responsibilities of the Clarius kept her some distance away from her former knight. It was… contentment, in a way.

Until one day, the moment that she had been waiting for arrived.

The news swept through the city like wildfire, barely before the woman was out of the gate. _Lady Blackpearl had been expelled,_ whispers said; Diana sent her away for voicing her opposition. It did not surprise Alexandra one bit; the Lucidia were a secretive, scheming bunch, and it was only a matter of time before a breaking point was reached. That time was today.

Still, a small part of her was troubled that the founder of the Jumi was now gone, but she quickly forgot it as she resumed her position as Florina's knight, even if lacking the formality of the bond. They had not seen fit to hand it back to her.

Now that she could reach Florina unfettered, the friendship quickly blossomed into what it had been. Still, many other things were different. The Empire had changed from a distant fear into a threat drawing ever closer, led by their mysterious emperor. Skirmishes had begun, rebellions arising in Forsena, violent enough that the new conflicts had begun to be called the "Wars of Death." Faced with destruction on the world, the gossip among the Jumi was that the Goddess was calling on them once again, to fight if not to heal.

Alexandra wondered how they could conceive of such a thing. Florina was the only one who could heal them, keep them invincible, but even now, she was disintegrating in both body and soul. The tears of the Clarius had to be rationed, to the point they could barely be used at all.

She watched this with pain, and anger for Lady Blackpearl to put Florina in this position yet not be there to see her through; a thought that warred irrationally with her relief at having the woman gone. And in the back of her head, there was always, always there, the promise she had made and had not yet fulfilled. Putting it altogether, as time wore on, it was clear to her that there was only one answer.

It was easy enough to plan. She was of Navarrese roots; she was a thief by her very nature. All that remained was to work out the details.

Florina trusted her implicitly, naturally; it was one of the beautiful things about the Clarius, and Alexandra hated to use it this way. But it was for her own good, after all.

It was one evening that she knew the time was right, in the early blush of evening, as her core shifted from green to purple and her heart shifted to her darker emotions. Determination set her stride as she made her way up the steps leading to the chamber, the steps that led her to her guardian.

The twilight air was settling into darkness, and a trace of humidity rising from the warm valley below was cleared by a breeze that ran through the Clarius's chambers, in on one side and out the other. This went unnoticed by the room's sole occupant, as Florina reclined on the bed that had practically become her home.

Jumi did not truly get sick, but her shallow, labored breathing triggered instinctive worry in Alexandra nonetheless. She strode across the room briskly, to kneel at Florina's side, reaching one arm protectively over her guardian.

The Clarius, the most precious of all the Jumi, tilted her head slightly to look her in the eye. Florina was far too sensitive to miss Alexandra's mood. "What is it, my knight and dearest friend?" she asked quietly.

"I'm going to take you away from here," Alexandra said, in the most soothing voice she had. "You cannot stay here any longer, suffering like this."

"Oh," Florina replied, a measure of her exhaustion that she did not question it. Alexandra touches her fingertips to Florina's eyelids, gently closing them; Florina did not resist.

She reached out with her core, and heard the answer, as the Jumi city shimmered out of existence.

The place in which they found themselves was… perhaps in this dimension, perhaps another. It did not matter; Alexandra could find her way back here easily enough.

The room – or whatever simulation of a room it was – was softly lit, wall-lamps casting flames over soothing colors. It was all nothing but a backdrop, a scene, for the enormous box that rested with its lid flipped open like a clamshell in the middle of the room. An ornate, gem-encrusted thing, radiating with odd strings of Mana that linked the dimensions to one another. A jewelry box.

The inside was lined in material to rival the softest silk, and Alexandra scooped up the smaller form of Florina. It was into that softness that she settled her former guardian – curse that, _her_ guardian. She always had been, always would be.

Florina opened her eyes with a sleepy expression, they taking in her surroundings without really focusing on them. "Why am I here, Sandra?"

"To keep you safe," Alexandra replied. _To keep you in slumber until you _can_ be_, she thought to herself.

"Safe from what?" Florina questioned.

"There is a jewel hunter coming," Alexandra answered with an element of twisted truth.

"Then I need to heal those who are taken…" Florina protested weakly.

Alexandra shook her head, and gently pushed her guardian back down. Florina exhaled, and settled in without protest. "Do you know the story of Pandora's box?" she asked softly.

Florina shook her head slightly, and she continued. "It is an old story of Navarre. The Mana Goddess had a box with all the evils of the world, and a Navarrese thief named Pandora stole it from her. Curious to see her treasure, she opened it, and released all the evils in the world, but shut it in time to leave one thing left that would save the world from those evils: hope."

Florina shifted slightly, and Sandra looked on. Florina had nearly the pallor of death, barely any of the woman left to her, only the core, desperately clinging to the body it was encased in. She _was_ that hope, Alexandra knew. And the Jumi were the evil of the world, herself included; their presence no longer gave, only took, triggering desire and greed where they should have spread unity and love. Having Florina, having hope… it was a curse of sorts, a thorn. It made the Jumi think that there was anything left for them.

Alexandra cursed the name of Blackpearl and all of the Lucidia, as the Clarius drifted off into the sleep that would keep her – preserved, if not well. And shielded from anywhere Lady Blackpearl could find her.

Relieved of her worldly cares, she already looked more peaceful, the faintest hint of color returning to her cheeks as her breaths became more even. Alexandra looked down on her, leaning in closer and closer, finally kissing her once, deeply, on the lips, with a pang of regret for everything that had happened, everything that must be, finally breaking the embrace wistfully.

"Sweet dreams," she whispered. She reached up to close the lid, feeling a sense of satisfaction as it clicked shut; and Sandra, the hunter of jewels, rose, and left.

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"The city was in chaos for days," Rubens said. "We tore through it, but their was no sign of either the Clarius or her temporary knight."

Blackpearl pondered that, looking at the Tower of Leires behind her. She had no desire to enter it today, and the problem at hand was more important. "I knew as son as it happened," she said. The bond had not broken, exactly; it was simply no longer _there_, the sense of her guardian leaving a hollow emptiness behind. But there was nothing she could do for that; it was left to fix it, now. "Who do they think did it?"

"There have been all kinds of wild stories, blaming humans, fairies, the empire, dragons, even some who wonder if it wasn't the will of the Goddess herself. But the Jumi are frightened that it could happen in their midst, and now…"

"There are none who can cry," Blackpearl finished, though frankly she was wondering how anyone could have gotten into the jeweled city. She mulled over the problem.

"Will you return home?" Rubens broke into her thoughts. "The people could use your presence in this time of crisis."

It was a tough question, one that pulled both Blackpearl's heartstrings and sense of responsibility in multiple directions. "No," she finally replied.

Rubens looked at her, waiting for explanation.

Blackpearl paused before providing that explanation, and when she spoke, her voice was careful, measured, as she weighed every word. "No," she repeated, slowly, reluctantly. "You are correct, but at the same time, I must realize what it was that I left for. It was for one purpose – to find the Sword. Now, I have three jobs, to find the Sword, to Florina, and find the kidnapper as well." Rubens looked at her expectantly. "Alexandra is gone too, is she not? Perhaps if I find her…" It was a long shot, following residues of residues to find Florina's former knight, but she may be the only one who might know more.

"It's a long shot," Rubens suggested. "We do not know if Alexandra herself is alive."

"It's all I've got to work with," Blackpearl insisted.

"Then take the chance, however small. We are in grave danger, without the Clarius," Rubens reminded her. "Diana's disillusionment increases every day, and there is nothing I can do about it. The city splinters, and the rumors of the Empire grow ever more frightening. How long before they turn their eyes to us?"

"Then that only makes my chore ever more urgent," Blackpearl insisted. She looked up at the Tower. "Mana pulls me here many places, of which this is one. The Sword may be here, or elsewhere, but I must find it, or die trying."


	42. Legends: Desire

**42: Legends: Desire**

Elazul was feeling... murderous. That was the best word he could come up with, and frankly, it was a damn good word to describe his current frame of mind.

He whispered it to himself as he strode through the stately trees of Vadise's forest, silken sand-colored mantle whisking behind in tune with his steps. _Murderous_. It felt good to say, he whispering it and tasting the sensation on his tongue.

At least until he found the object of his fury.

"Elazul, what a surprise - " That was as far as Escad got before he found himself slammed into the tree behind him by a crystalline fist.

"What did you do," Elazul found himself hissing in a bare whisper, far more chilling than a shout. "What did you do to _her_?" His voice rose at the last syllable, all of his hate spilling into that single word. He pulled his arm back, and Escad forced a grin, composure feigned from someone who would almost certainly be bruised head all over tomorrow.

The man was far too arrogant; _Holy Knight_, indeed. Elazul had never especially liked him, but had tolerated him, for the sake of friendship and unity. Now, plain hate was seeping up,, and Elazul did not bother to control his expression.

"I did nothing," Escad replied. The tremor in his voice was nearly nonexistent, but Elazul took pleasure in it nonetheless. "It was Drakonis. I was looking for something that Larc said he could lead me to. She got caught in the way."

Elazul fingered the hilt of his sword, but did not draw it. Not yet. "You left with her, and she came back... broken. No one's ever done that to her. And I hold _you_ responsible."

Escad's arrogance took hold. "You want to fight over it?" Two hands reached down for his sword, the heavy, two-handed blade that Elazul's obsidian blade might or might not stand a chance against. But he had other advantages.

"Sure." Elazul put on his most conceited grin. "Don't forget, though, I'm a Jumi. That means I can survive any injury short of damage to my core, and I've already made it through that. So maybe I'm invincible."

The look of doubt on Escad's face was completely worth the effort.

"Boys?" came the call from across the clearing. Both turned.

Daena stood there, tapping her sandal-enclosed foot impatiently. To his surprise, Sierra stood at her right, and ever so slightly behind. The wolf-girl had been fairly reticent since joining them; she was taking the thing with her brother hard.

"And I do mean _boys_, apparently," Daena continued. "I think we have more important things to worry about."

Elazul snapped to attention. "I thought you were with her."

Daena sighed. "She doesn't want to hear it from me. Bud and Lisa crack their jokes, and she looks blank. _Pearl_ tried to talk to her, and even she couldn't soothe her."

"That's bad," Elazul conceded. When Pearl could not soothe someone... after all, he silently admitted, she was the one who soothed _him_.

"So that leaves you," Sierra finally spoke up.

"Why not you?" Elazul demanded.

Sierra only looked at him. "I could talk to her. I know almost everything there is to know about Larc and Drakonis. But what would it serve? She does not want to be reminded, she wants to be comforted, and that needs trust."

"Great. You go there, and Escad and I will chat," Daena determined.

"About what?" Escad challenged. Elazul had to give the man this, he never gave up a fight.

Daena looked square at him. "You've got some things to answer for, buddy, things you've been avoiding talking to me about," she replied. "But I've known you most of your life, and there's more important things at work, so perhaps we should reach some compromise."

Escad pulled down his still-raised sword, to plunge it into the soil. "Agreed," he replied. But Elazul barely registered the response, as he walked away from his bickering companions.

He had just one thought. _Ariesa_.

------------------------------------

Pearl's directions led him some distance away, to an isolated edge of the forest. And it was there, in a lonely clearing, that he encountered Ariesa slumped all alone, head in one hand, sword clutched in the other.

His impression was that she wanted to be alone, his first impulse to let her be as she wished; but he had told Sierra he would do his best, and he'd be damned if he would return without trying.

He sat next to her silently. She did not stir. What now? What good was he at this comforting stuff? Should he talk? Should he touch her? Should he just stay?

It was the blood dripping that finally moved him to action. He saw the red splatter in the leaves coating the floor of the forest, and realized she was holding the sword by the blade, and squeezing her fist on the sharp edge.

"Stop it!" he cried, and reached to pry her hand from the blade. His tone softened as he refastened it on the hilt. "This is the right way to hold a sword. You, of all people should know that," he teased.

A stupid joke, but it got her to look up, exposing a tear-stained face. "No, it's not, Elazul," she told him in a dead tone of voice. "I don't know how to hold a sword at all."

And with that, she flung the sword at an unassuming tree. It _clanged_ against the trunk before _plunking_ to the ground.

Elazul's first instinct was to retrieve the projected weapon, but he looked down at her and changed his mind. Girl first, sword after. "You shouldn't throw away a weapon like that. It's a decent piece of Granz steel."

"It doesn't matter," she replied quietly. "I'm never going to use a sword again."

He grabbed her palm in his, to look at the cut across it. Not deep enough to hurt her grip, but enough to leave a scar, and for that, he wished there was a way to heal it for her. Goddess _damn_ it, what good was it being a Jumi? Where were tears when you needed them?

"Don't say that," he asked. "Please?" She did not respond. "Come on, Ariesa, you know I never say please."

She didn't laugh, but moved to nuzzle her head on his shoulder, before breaking into sobs. Elazul briefly worried if crying on the shoulder of a Jumi was the same as crying _for_ a Jumi, but a half minute had passed with no signs of petrification.

Cautiously, he wrapped an arm around her. The left one. Always, only the left one. Carefully, he positioned the other one around her, keeping the stone away from her skin, and pulling her into a light and awkward embrace.

It was enough. Her arms slithered around his neck, pulling him to her, her chest against his, he able to feel the warmth of her skin even through her clothes.

His core had definitely taken notice. There was something in it that felt… hot, yet shivery at the same time. It was a sensation he had felt only a few times before; but he hardly needed his core to relay the message. The rest of his body knew just fine.

She was close… very close. Too close. Her cheek only brushed his, and his grip on her tightened involuntarily. He wanted to close his eyes and just relish in the feeling of her, but he wanted even more to _look_ at her, and his blue eyes met her red-rimmed, tear-stained brown.

The gaze was intense, and he dropped his eyes uncomfortably, but couldn't pull away. Not knowing what took him, he leaned in to close the gap between them and let his lips brush hers, just the slightest whisper of a touch passing by.

She gripped him tighter, and he had his answer.

Elazul tried to tell himself it was what she needed. But he knew it was what _he_ needed, what he wanted, as his lips met hers. Gently at first, and tears faded. Then more deeply, she sinking into his arms with a sigh, as he found himself kissing her, again and again, with lust, passion, tenderness, and a million things in between.

_Sierra knew why she sent me here_, he thought to himself, before thought slipped away completely.

------------------------------------

Vadise rested her head on her forelegs as her agitated dragoon paced the clearing.

Sierra was doing her best, trying to process all that happened, all the things she had learned that Vadise had, she thought with guilt, been forced to keep from her. But opening up a hundred-year-old wound could not fail to leave a scar.

It had been going on for an hour. Sierra kept circling back to the same worries about Larc over and over again, and Vadise was trying to talk her through it, though Sierra at this point seemed rather inconsolable.

"Why don't you do something about it?" Vadise finally suggested, as soothing remarks and sympathy failed to have the desired effect.

Sierra stopped up short. "What can I do about Larc?"

"Perhaps nothing for your brother at the moment," Vadise gently pointed out. "But your goals coincide with the others, now, do they not? You should leave with them."

"But my liege…" Sierra's protest trailed off, as Vadise spoke over her. "You were going to say that you can't leave me, were you not? But you have, on a number of occasions, when I have asked you. Perhaps there is a reason now? Are you afraid of how it all will end, of being tied to something more?" Sierra's flash of expression showed Vadise the dragon had hit her mark.

"I would go myself, if I could," she continued, briefly flashing back to a time when she would have eagerly done just that, a thousand years before. But she had new responsibilities, she thought, opening herself briefly to the Mana Stone that shone again. It was growing faster than ever, struggling to catch up, struggling to be ready in time, and she could no more leave it than she could a baby.

Sierra would have to do the job that she herself could not; she might be a dragon, but she still could not be everywhere at once. She paused once again. "I… I would rather not force you, but this is important enough. I would prefer you to go of your own free will."

Her dragoon paused, shock creeping into her face. Vadise regretted the implications of that statement, but Sierra understood, and slowly, but surely, she nodded. "It will be so."

------------------------------------

A few days in Domina, and things went more or less back to normal, although nightmares of burning dragons continued to haunt Ariesa, making her wish her older dreams would come back.

Daena and Escad were traveling back and forth to Gato more or less continuously, getting close to the time of choosing the new Priestess. Their prior conflicts seemed to be smoothed over, more or less; she supposed a common cause had a way of doing that.

Sierra had come to Domina with them, but the dragoon remained aloof still, preferring to stay at the inn even after being offered the hospitality of Ariesa's house. As did Thoma, who had trailed along with them, now bereft of the ties that had held him; Ariesa felt a splash of responsibility for that. Elazul and Pearl had returned to the small house in town that had become their home.

Which pretty much left Ariesa where she started. Herself, and the twins. Not that she minded, they definitely brought cheer to her home, but after months of running around and having all kinds of Jumi and others camped out, it made her house feel a little bit empty. Especially when one wasn't fighting any monsters to distract oneself.

And then there was Elazul, who was certainly twisting her head around. She thought she was clear on how they felt about each other, and then she wasn't, and then… He would greet her sometimes with a kiss on the cheek. On the _cheek_! Putting her in the difficult position, which she supposed women had been in for as long as men and women had been around, of trying to figure out What The Man Was Thinking.

Well, today, at least, he had been clear enough, asking her politely if she would come meet him after lunchtime, as he had something for her? She was trying not to scuttle too fast in her eagerness, and she forced down the butterflies in her stomach as she entered the town and followed the main street to his house.

He opened the door nearly immediately at her knock, and stepped outside into the bright sunlight of Domina. Pearl's voice called from somewhere inside, what sounded like wishing them a good afternoon, and he hurriedly shouted goodbye as he closed the door before turning to her, leaving them all alone on the front steps.

"So," she mumbled, feeling suddenly, oddly shy.

"We're going to the item shop," he told her, with at least a hint of a smile. She looked at him, bewildered, but shrugged as they turned to leave together.

The shop was in the same central part of town as Elazul's house, but they paced the short distance slowly, seeming to savor the moments of each other's company in a way they hadn't bothered to before. It gave Ariesa a chance to bring her mind back down to the little things – the sun in the air, the people bustling around her, the comforting presence of Elazul by her side. She almost regretted the sight of the shop's door before them.

At the entrance, he stopped abruptly. "Close your eyes," he told her, and she did, wondering why he was being so mysterious. His left arm slipped lightly around her waist, and he led her inside the shop a few steps before stopping her.

"Wait here a moment. Don't open your eyes yet," his voice said. Elazul's steps led a short distance away, and she heard him discussing something with Jennifer, the shop's keeper, in hushed tones. She kept her eyes obediently squeezed shut, and heard some shuffling before she felt his presence next to her again.

His hand took hers, and she felt cold material against her fingers, as Elazul's grip closed her fist around a cylindrical object.

"Okay, open them," came his voice.

She did, and looked down to find her right hand holding a spear. A strange weapon, somewhat in disuse, but still potent and powerful. "It seems to match you." Jennifer practically beamed.

Ariesa looked at the spear as if it was a rattler boa in her hand, and Elazul took notice. "If you're never going to use a sword again, perhaps you could try a spear," he suggested.

"But - " She tired to protest, but Elazul quickly cut her off.

"You're a fighter, Ariesa. It's what you always have been. Don't give up yourself that way." He paused, fingering the sword hilt at his side. "I might as well give up being a knight."

She looked at him, mouth slightly agape, but his eyes were absolutely sincere, and she couldn't disappoint him. She looked down, and fingered the spear with her free hand, one fingertip tracing down its shaft.

Her sword had been a serviceable, well crafted thing – but this was nearly a work of art. The handle was a heavy, dense wood, latticed by the precious silver of Lorant; and the blade was rare and unbreakable vinek rock, said to be a rock from the heavens itself. It was a foot long, and razor sharp, she realized as she ran one finger over the edge appraisingly.

Impulsively, she grabbed the weapon halfway along the shaft, and swung it with the same smooth strike with which she had wielded her old sword. "Ugh!" Elazul yelped, and she realized she had forgotten to factor in the other half of the handle, narrowly missing his head.

"Sorry," she murmured sheepishly, and went back to admiring the craftsmanship. "This is beautiful. Where'd you get this, anyway?"

"Daena's idea, actually, before she left again," he told her. "So I asked Jennifer, who got this from Niccolo, and who knows where he got it. Like all good weapons, it has a name. It's supposed to have once belonged to a queen, but of course that's inflated."

Ariesa was not so sure. Her hand squeezed it almost affectionately; it felt like something special, something right, even if she didn't know everything about it yet. Something like the man in front of her, a man who stood there looking at her holding the thing with pride and affection on his face. "What is its name?"

"Stargazer," Elazul replied.

------------------------------------

Sierra had been neglecting the others she had been sent to help, she knew. For the first few days in the town of Domina, she had made herself scarce, preferring to be alone with her grief, but slowly, necessity if nothing else brought her out into the town of Domina.

She passed Thoma from time to time; he always seemed to be heading somewhere to meet the twins who lived with Ariesa. The Jumi's house was not far from the inn, and she ran into them occasionally as well; Elazul, in particular, she found comforting to talk to; he seeming to understand instinctively her need _not_ to say everything that crossed her mind.

But wallowing in misery was no role for a dragoon, and finally one day she picked herself up, swallowed her pain, and asking for some brief directions, marched the road west and out of town towards Ariesa's house.

There was no answer at the front door, but she heard a commotion from behind, and followed to the back to find the girl awkwardly practicing with a spear, a weapon she had clearly rarely held before. It was nearly as tall as she was, and Ariesa's graceless motions showed little sense of its balance.

Despite that, she was so absorbed in her practice that she failed to notice Sierra's approach, starting as the dragoon popped in her view, then blushing slightly in embarrassment at being watched.

Sierra ignored that, and reached one delicate white paw for the spear. "You're doing that wrong," she told her, gently sliding it out of her hands. "See, what you do is you use the leverage like this…" Over the years, she had the time to understand the concept and execution of a variety of weaponry, and as she gripped the spear instead of her familiar knives, her mind automatically switched over to the new mentality. It moved as if it had been hers all along, and Ariesa only watched in fascination.

"Let me," she finally said, taking her implement back, and imitated what Sierra had shown her, with rather decent results. Sierra continued her tutoring, and for hours they remained there, as Ariesa focused intensely, she craving the knowledge that Sierra was feeding to her.

The sun was nearing the horizon, when finally the two gave up for the day, the hours having flown by, and they sat together on a small grassy knoll behind Ariesa's little treehouse. Sierra found that something about the house resonated with her; not quite as potent, but still something like the feeling of the white forest, the forest of Vadise that had become her home.

"So what now?" Ariesa asked finally. "You came with us back here, but right now, I feel like we are all doing a whole bunch of nothing."

Sierra mumbled something noncommittal, not willing to admit that hit a little close to the mark. There were many things Vadise had sent her here for, and she had tended to none of them. Suddenly, she realized who it was that she needed to speak with, and she pondered in silence as the sun slipped away.

------------------------------------

Weeks went by, and Ariesa found herself floating along on a relaxing sea of calm bordering on ennui. But things began to creep in to disturb her peace. And one of those, unsurprisingly, was Elazul, who seemed to grow not closer, but ever more distant every time she spent time with him.

She didn't think that kissing someone would make such a difference, but… it did. His kisses, his touch, ran the gamut from charming to passionate, but underneath it all, it was as if, after all this time, they were getting to know each other all over again. And she never could predict how he would be on any given day.

Pearl offered her the bit of reassurance she could, when Ariesa voiced a bit of worry for him. "There's something on his mind, I don't know what it is myself, but I hope he'll tell us soon," she said, with feigned cheerfulness.

Ariesa wasn't especially convinced.

It wasn't entirely unexpected when she entered the pub one day to find him standing in the empty room, morosely staring out the windows. His expression was not unlike the first day she had met him, in this same place. There was less of the raw anger that he had then, but more of the worry.

"What's on your mind?" she asked, approaching hesitantly as her voiced echoed in the quiet.

He jumped slightly, apparently too preoccupied to have heard her, and his eyes were… troubled… as they met hers. "I've been talking to Sierra," he began hesitantly. "She's worried about the same things I am – Jumi, tears, Mana… what are we doing here?"

She had no answer, and merely paused, waiting for him to continue.

His eye drifted off into the distance. "I've… forgotten… I think, what it was I was trying to do, and why," he said. "Drakonis said… the Sword… the Stones were supposed to…" he gulped, his eyes flashing to her, afraid to bring up her experiences under his fist.

"I want to go see Diana in Geo," he concluded, and Ariesa suddenly recalled the nearly-forgotten Jumi, crystallized in the basement of some woman's house, removed from the world perhaps for eternity.

"How will that help?" she wondered.

He drooped slightly. "I'm not sure, but it's worth a try. Besides, Rubens would want me to," he told her. "I feel like I'm flailing around. I don't know where to go next. Sierra wants to leave to Vadise for a bit, and I was wondering… if you would keep watch over Pearl for me?" He looked out the window again. "I feel like Sandra's around the corner waiting for us, even more so because we haven't seen her in a while… I'm not convinced it's even safe here anymore, but I trust you." His eyes were sincere, and pleading.

"Of course," she replied quickly enough. "I'll find her a spot, it's been pretty crowded at my house lately…"

"Why don't you stay at my house, then?" he asked, then blinked. "Crowded? By who?"

"Thoma's over there all the time," she answered.

"He is?" Elazul's face looked, of all things, amused. "Are you okay with leaving them alone with a guy visiting?"

Ariesa shifted uncomfortably. "They're my apprentices, not my _kids_," she replied. "I don't lay down the law on them."

"I see." Elazul still wore a wry smile; at least it had broken the moment.

"So, anyway…" she hurriedly changed the subject.

"Oh. Yes," he said, brought back to the topic at hand. "Maybe if you come by… um… tomorrow night? I'll get you set up there before I leave."

Ariesa only nodded, as it suddenly hit her. Elazul was leaving. For how long, she did not know. Her sense of complacently was suddenly shattered, and she quickly turned to go with a lump in her throat.

------------------------------------

A bag slung over her arm, Ariesa knocked at the door with trepidation, and Pearl's sing-song voice echoed, "Come in, it's open".

She had never been inside their house. They had lived there for only a short period of time before all moved on again, and it showed. It was an obvious work in progress things scattered here and there, odd pieces of mismatched furniture only partly filling rooms.

Ariesa followed the direction from which she had heard Pearl's voice to find herself in the kitchen, where Pearl was happily chopping up a miscellany of assorted foodstuffs. An appraising eye swept over the room; it had a homey, but not _too_ cohesive feel to it; not quite roommates, but neither was it a couple's home. It made her feel a little less like she was intruding.

"Elazul just went to the market for a minute, he'll be back shortly," Pearl assured her, putting down her knife to give a Ariesa a friendly hug. "We haven't had a lot of time to get the place in shape," she said apologetically. "Just some kitchen stuff, and Elazul picked out the rugs…"

"Elazul? _Rugs_?" Ariesa said in surprise. Those were two words that didn't go in the same sentence.

"Well, he does have good taste," Pearl replied.

The sound of the front door opening and closing distracted her, and a moment later, Elazul entered, tossing a bag of vegetables on the counter as if grocery shopping was as natural to him as swordplay. He acknowledged Ariesa with a quick but friendly flick of the eyebrows, before turning his attention to his guardian.

"Show her around, Elazul," suggested Pearl. "Dinner's almost ready." Elazul nodded, and motioned to Ariesa to follow.

Ariesa found herself… distracted, as Elazul walked her through the rooms of the small and cozy house, she sort of taking it all in distantly yet curiously. Pearl's and Elazul's rooms were both sparse and disorganized, though Pearl had somehow found the time to splash hers with a few vases of flowers. At some point, she remembered sitting down for dinner with the Jumi, and the most banal of conversation crossing the table.

Pearl eventually chose to retire, and she found herself in Elazul's room quietly chatting as night settled over the small town of Domina. Every time there was a lull in conversation, the sound of silence settled in the gaps, broken only by quiet chirps of crickets outside.

She rose, reluctantly. "It's getting late," she told him. "I have to get home." She turned, expecting to say goodbye, and be on her way.

The expression on his face was… strange. It pulled her in, her eyes meeting his, their clear blueness drawing her in, in the way that she could never resist. "You don't have to leave," he said softly.

Ariesa stood there, suddenly feeling painfully shy, weighing all the possibilities before sinking back down next to him. She leaned back, one hand reaching up to pull the sticks out of her hair, and Elazul snaked his arm over her gently. His hand ran through her loosened tresses slowly, pressing against her back, pulling her to him, and she couldn't remember who kissed who first, but she hardly cared, lost in the moment of he and her close together as she had wanted.

The moment was all the more precious for nearly having lost him. She had Mekiv to thank for him being there still.

Her hands ran over his shoulders and down his back, and with a sudden, mischievous urge, she wondered what would happen if she decided to up the ante. Deliberately, she let one hand slide further downward…

He _gasped_, and stiffened, pulling suddenly away from her, and she recoiled, only looking at him in shock. He seemed just as surprised, looking at her wide-eyed, and sheer mortification set in as she sat bolt upright.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled awkwardly, afraid to meet his eyes. "I shouldn't have…" She trailed off, not sure what else she should say, just knowing she was scared to look him in the face, knowing her own face was on fire. She curled up miserably on the edge of what passed for his bed.

"Ariesa," she heard his voice, but she did not turn around until she felt his hand on her waist. She tilted her head slightly backwards, to see his full attention on her.

"I…" He swallowed, but kept his gaze on her intently. "I want to. I do. But…"

"But what?" she asked.

"Just but," he replied, suddenly brusque. Her shoulders slumped, and he reached one hand up to them.

Gingerly, she let him lay her back down, and settled for snuggling close against him. He kissed her forehead tenderly as she felt herself drifting off towards sleep.

------------------------------------

"Ariesa!"

It was not Elazul's voice waking her, but a high-pitched feminine one, and Ariesa stirred. Pearl opened the door a crack and stepped in, seemingly nonchalant about finding Ariesa in Elazul's bed.

Speaking of Elazul… "Where is he?" she asked groggily, reaching an arm over to find empty sheets.

"Oh," Pearl said. "He left… early, I think. He kind of gets that way when he's antsy to be off somewhere."

"True," Ariesa noted. Reluctantly, she pulled herself out from the blankets to face the day.

She had been pretty much used to having the Jumi together, or Elazul on his own, and conversation was choppy, awkward for the first few days. But the feminine instinct for bonding eventually took over, and they were soon chatting like old friends – especially since they had at least one thing in common.

"Elazul," Pearl sighed. "Always worried about something."

"Can't sit still for a minute," Ariesa agreed.

It was a warm evening several days later, and Ariesa had comfortably settled into her temporary lodgings. She made sporadic trips back to her own home to make sure it was still in one piece, the twins assuring her each time that they were just _fine_ without her. It was good to know, but somehow made her feel a little less… needed.

Pearl was good company, however, and this night, they amicably sat together in the living room after dinner, a bottle of wine resting nearly finished on the table. Suddenly, Pearl she asked a question Ariesa had sort of been avoiding.

"You know why he wanted to go to Geo, right?" the other woman asked her in an uncharacteristically pointed manner.

It took Ariesa by surprise, and she took a sip of wine before responding. "Why?" she asked, a little afraid of the answer.

"He told me about your trip to Geo, eventually…" Pearl sighed. "Not long after we got back from the White Forest… I guess he kind of felt like he shouldn't hide things anymore, and it all kind of spilled out. You know he blames himself for what happened to Esmeralda?"

"Why?" Ariesa asked. "If it was anyone's fault, it was mine!"

"It wasn't anyone's fault, Ariesa," Pearl said softly. "I don't think… nothing could have stopped Sandra, really, but Elazul feels everything is his fault, that he can protect everyone." She almost didn't seem to be speaking to Ariesa anymore. "I think… he takes on a lot more than he can bear. He punishes himself for everything that ever happened to the Jumi."

Ariesa paused to consider that for a minute. It did seem quite in character for him. "He told me he wanted to go see Diana."

A flutter of recognition crossed Pearl's face. "Diana?" she said. "In Geo? He didn't tell me that part."

Ariesa tried to recall, filling in the story for her. "Diana did say she wanted to meet Elazul's guardian…" she said, a wicked smile crossing her face. "So… it seems you've been invited to Geo."

Pearl looked shocked at first. "Oh, Ariesa!" she finally exclaimed, a little giggle escaping her. "You're awful! Elazul will be so mad when he finds out!"

Ariesa met Pearl's laughter with her own, as they began to make plans.

------------------------------------

The travel to Geo was slow, sticky, and hot.

Not that Pearl really much cared. Those were external things, and she knew they were not very important. She was far more troubled by what was churning through her own head.

She looked at her tall, golden-haired companion quietly. Ariesa was… a friend. There was something about her that had drawn Pearl from the start, something about her past or future, she didn't know. And then she worried about Elazul… trying to sort out feelings she herself did not entirely understand. He was hers, in a way, in a way he always would be, despite… well, she didn't really want to think about that.

Since the day they had met, she and Elazul had always had their own understanding, a kinship of sorts, two lost souls who did not know where they were from or where they were going. For finding that in another… she was eternally grateful. And from that gratitude, came her desire to see him happy.

But she couldn't have predicted what would happen once he was.

She snuck another glance at Ariesa, wondering how the two of them could be fumbling through something she saw so absolutely clearly. As much as she wanted happiness for Elazul, now every step he made towards it, was one step that took him further away from her, and she wished this did not have to be yet another difficult choice where everything came with a price.

She turned her attention back to the road before them, feeling alone, and troubled.

------------------------------------

Sandra knew where she was going this time.

She had been wandering around, seeing to this and that, but in the back of the head she had gleefully looked forward to making her way back to Geo once again – and now that she was back, she was going to get what she had come here for.

Finding her way back to the mansion was easy enough, and breaking in even easier, the place's inhabitants having no hint she was even there as she snuck down to the basement, finding her goal had been moved to the dank arena below. The stone statue stood there, all alone in the near-darkness, and Sandra thought that an appropriate punishment.

She circled the statue for a couple turns, examining it from every angle, contemplating. _This was the fate of those who closed off their heart_, she thought to herself. Once a shining diamond, now nothing but an unresponsive block of stone in an empty basement. But then again, weren't all the Jumi nothing but dead rocks now?

She grew impatient, and put one hand to the statue, just below the collarbone, feeling the core that still lived underneath, no matter that Diana had wanted the rest of herself to die. She reached for that knot of Mana, and felt its answer, it pulling life desperately to the surface.

Color returned to Diana's skin, and as she opened her eyes, she gasped to see who awaited her.

"Waiting for a knight to wake you, perhaps?" Sandra taunted her, enjoying the flinch of fear across Diana's face. "Sorry to disappoint you, but this is what you're getting."

"You are a hardly a true night, Alexandra." Diana's famously hard expression took over, and Sandra felt a brief flash of near-respect for her. "How did you know where to find me, anyway?"

"I have my ways," Sandra replied, smirking.

"Why do you do such things?" the leader of the Jumi questioned her.

"Revenge," Sandra replied. "That is my only desire. For taking Florina's tears and ripping her life away. For the things you did in the name of saving the Jumi, while you lost every bit of sparkle, turned away from life."

"Is that what you want?" Diana's eyes met hers pointedly, unnerving her in the way the Lucidia always had. She felt her tenuous link to Diana waver, and clamped down on it once again. "We tried to find our hope, hope that turned out to be a curse. I have borne my own regrets for years, but what was done, was done because it must be done."

"You took the easy way out," Sandra accused. "Letting your soul fade to nothingness, so you did not have to feel pain anymore, becoming the rock you always have been."

"Perhaps you are right. If so, then let this be done," Diana replied, letting her head hang forward. "Take my core, and let your anger be done. Do not destroy the rest of the Jumi, when I'm the one you want. You have stolen Florina, and Blackpearl is dead. I want nothing more for myself."

_Blackpearl dead? You have no idea_, thought Sandra, but did not want to offer Diana even that bit of hope. She didn't deserve it. "Perhaps you want nothing, _Lucidia - _" she pronounced the word scornfully, "but I, and my new master, still have desire."

She reached for Diana's core, but the Jumi leader's form was first solid, then vaporous, as Sandra struggled to hold her in the flesh. She tugged on the bond with all her strength, but it was not enough, and it snapped back, leaving Diana a stone statue once again, and the core frustrating close, yet so far away.

"Wake up, damn you!" Sandra cried, cursing under her breath, plopping down to the ground in frustration. She sat there for some time, until sounds from above entered her consciousness. Familiar sounds.

She smirked, and waited.

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Ariesa and Pearl crept stealthily through Geo, somehow managing to avoid Elazul and anyone else they might know, finally finding themselves sneaking into the mansion where Ariesa had seen Diana's crystallized form.

"I feel like I'm being watched," Pearl admitted, and truthfully, Ariesa felt a little chill herself as they traversed downward, finding the statue in the deepest basement, alone, like a piece of discarded trash.

Pearl approached the statue, an odd look in her eyes, a sadness that Ariesa had never seen on her before. "It is said that a Jumi turns to stone when they close off their hearts. In reality, it happens when a Jumi gives up the desire to live. Maybe that means the same thing," she wondered.

Ariesa murmured, fingering the statue. Simple cold stone; it felt different than Elazul's arm, which still had the warmth of life coursing through it somehow. "Is that... it?" she asked Pearl. "She's gone to us?"

Pearl looked morose; no, more than that, _devastated_, and Ariesa wondered what was going through her head now. "Jumi are never gone forever, as long as their cores exist," she replied. "But it takes something close to her heart to bring her back. A guardian could be brought back by her knight; the bond is powerful enough to give both something to live for."

"But Rubens is gone," Ariesa noted sadly, remembering their final goodbye, he wanting and waiting for the woman who could not come back to him, the woman trapped here.

Pearl said nothing, only placed one of her own small hands on the cool stone. Suddenly, Ariesa felt a jolt – of emotion, pain, pride, hate, resentment, guilt, grief, a crazy and overwhelming mixture that caused her to shriek involuntarily and pull her hand away as if it hurt.

Pearl remained a minute before pulling her own hand back, brow furrowing in concentration. "What did you do?" breathed Ariesa, rubbing one hand with the other.

"I… broke the barriers to her heart, I guess you could say," Pearl replied. "But I couldn't pull her back… I felt like she wanted to see me, but…"

"If she won't come back to you, it's not surprising she wouldn't come back for me," came a male voice, and Ariesa turned to see Elazul stroll in.

"Elazul!" Pearl cried happily, and ran to her knight to lay a finger on his core in what Ariesa know recognized was a gesture more intimate than any embrace would be. She felt a flash of jealousy, pushed it down, and then felt sad for doing so.

No need to. His eyes caught hers for just a second, and said everything she wanted him to say. Oddly, he didn't seem terribly upset to find her here. Possibly, he had expected it.

"Were you looking for her too?" Pearl chattered amicably.

"I was… " Elazul replied, "but I think… I think she wanted to meet both of us together. I couldn't get any response – I think she may just have been here too long. I've been at the magic academy, talking to Nunuzac about what else we can do."

"Perhaps now that you both are here…" Ariesa suggested, and Elazul nodded thoughtfully. He took Pearl's left hand in his, together they touching where Diana's core shimmered now only dully, barely distinguishable from the gray stone. Pearl had a look of concentration on her face, and slowly…

A soft, diffuse light seemed to spread and slowly fill her. Diana appeared in her full luminous beauty, and took a deep breath as if it had been her first. "You…" she began, looking around in wonderment. "How did you reach into my soul that way?"

Pearl looked straight at the tall, elegant woman, dressed regal robes of white and gold. "I… I just knew."

Diana looked at her and her eyes widened. "Could it be?" she gasped. "No… it can't. You are a guardian," she said, seeming puzzled, and glancing at Elazul. "Pearl, it must be? I see…"

Pearl looked back at Diana, her eyes fixated, blurring between confusion and understanding and back again…

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"We're both here," Elazul said, both reverent and rude at the same time, in that way he always seemed to get away with. Pearl laughed silently despite herself. "What now?"

"Now… the truth." Diana sighed. "Are you ready for it, lapis knight?"

Elazul squared his shoulders. "As opposed to not knowing?"

"Perhaps," Diana said, her face mournful. "Do you know, really, what being Jumi means? Do you know how it is to endure centuries bearing the burden of being a living memory in rock, a memory of the Goddess and of Mana, trying to keep that memory alive when the world has stopped believing? Do you know what it is like to try to feel love, _be_ love, when little love is left in this world?"

She stared deeply at Elazul, and he dropped his eyes towards the floor, shifting uncomfortably. "These are the lessons you both must learn, if there is any hope for the Jumi, if there is to be even _one_ left who can become Clarius, who can still cry…" She looked pointedly at Pearl, and Pearl felt that odd sense of _knowing_ once again. "If there is no Clarius, there is no Jumi. Tears of healing... teardrop crystals... bits of Mana, shards of life. Did we all lose the ability to care enough?" Diana mused. "This is why the jewel hunter now seeks revenge against the Jumi."

Elazul was clearly shocked, but Pearl felt even more than what she could feel from her knight. "That you told us, but revenge is for those wronged. We've been hated and hunted... but revenge?" Even in the depths of her memories, it was an idea that she could not fathom, and she struggled to put it altogether, it right there at the edge of her understanding, the thought struggling to make itself known.

"You remember more than you know," Diana murmured, barely audibly, and Pearl felt a chill, like someone looking over her shoulder. Only, that someone was herself. "But you forget, when the age of massive Jumi hunting was over... They changed to preserve themselves, cutting themselves away to survive. Most thought this was the only way, as they joined as one in their city."

"The bejeweled city?" Elazul interrupted.

Pearl drew a sharp breath. The memories that flickered in an out… memories of another person, a person who didn't seem to want to share them with Pearl… for just a moment, they were in clear focus, and then they were gone as a dream does upon waking. She tried to grab at it, but she knew within minutes it would all be gone.

Diana nodded. "Perhaps that was the mistake, everyone so close together yet hidden from the world, and discontent started to spread, some saying we had lost our sparkle. Perhaps they were right, but I could not guess how she would prove her point."

Another voice came, seemingly from the rafters above. "And then she kidnapped Florina, the only Jumi who could still heal with tears…"

Elazul involuntarily moved his body to protect Pearl, sword out and looking angrily at the rafters. "You! I know it's you, Sandra! Taking away the Jumi's only chance before they were decimated by Deathbringer! Sacrificing Florina, and the race of the Jumi!"

Sandra's voice only laughed. "That's where you have it wrong, Jumi Knight, you and your absent-minded guardian there. How much does she remember of what she helped to begin, do you think? Florina's tears are no longer yours; you will all be a sacrifice to her instead. Perhaps I'll save you for the end, so you can know there's nothing left for you."

Elazul bristled, looking around in frustration, unable to place the sound of the voice. Pearl froze, unsure, if the last comment was meant for Elazul or herself.

Diana looked to the rafters above, seemingly half-dazed. "They have awakened me. Come and do as you wish."

"No!" Pearl shrieked.

"Come out here where I can see you, you coward!" roared Elazul, whipping his sword out of its sheath.

Obediently, Sandra dropped to the floor, a smirk on her face, but before Elazul could move, Pearl grabbed his hand. He flinched at his guardian's touch.

"I couldn't bring her to life myself to be stolen," Sandra cackled, "but you could. Perhaps you are not so useless after all, unlike the way you were before." Pearl flinched at the insult, and Sandra pressed. "Does it hurt to know that I remember who you are, everything about you, while you struggle for every crumb?" Pearl took a step backwards. "Diana thinks you can cry. Can you do it? Can you do what the rest of us no longer can?"

"Us?" gasped Pearl, and a knot formed in Ariesa's stomach as she came to the same realization as Pearl had. "You're _Jumi_!"

"She was," murmured Diana hypnotically. "A knight..."

"Enough!" Elazul roared, and strode forward, but Pearl threw herself at him. He remained upright, but wobbled as she hit him.

"Elazul…" she began. "We mustn't kill her. We can't prolong the hate, to close off our emotions, we must clear the path to our cores once again, to Mana."

"Mana?" Sandra sneered. "Are you still preaching that after all this time? Hundreds of years of waiting for some Goddess to magically save us, and look where it got us, falling apart at the seams." Ariesa was little of a believer herself, but she had never heard anyone scorn the Goddess so openly before.

Elazul shoved his sword back in its sheath with finality. "Goddess or no Goddess, she's right. I can't afford to kill you until we find out where Florina is."

"Why doesn't your guardian cry herself, and save us both some trouble? Let her sacrifice herself for the good of the race, and find out how invincible the Jumi really are!"

"I would if I could!"Pearl suddenly cried out. "I would give it all back if I could only heal, only cry! _I'd give my life for the Jumi, if only there was a way!_"

Sandra took that as permission and dove for Pearl, but before Elazul could reach her, Diana snapped back to alertness and shoved Pearl out of the way. Pearl tumbled, coming to lie on the floor, bruised and crumpled, several feet away, and Sandra turned her fury on Diana. Diana fought back with sudden fear in her eyes, struggling against the hunter who now sought to destroy her own.

The struggle was quick and one-sided, and Sandra's arm wrapped around Diana's throat, her knife just a hair's breadth away from the Jumi leader's core.

"What did you expect?" Sandra said snidely, her eyes glaring at Pearl. "Couldn't even protect your own guardian. What, exactly, did you think you could achieve against _me_?" Pearl reached for the strength she had felt before, but shook her head hazily and found it wouldn't come. "I've waited a long time to take your life, leader of the Jumi. You said you were ready," Sandra finished, though Diana's wide-eyed fear showed she was anything but.

Elazul and Ariesa had sprung into action, but Sandra was ready. A quick flick, and Diana crumpled just in time for Elazul to catch her, and gently lower her body to the ground. Sandra was gone in a flash.

Pearl ran over to see that the former leader of the Jumi now had real terror in her eyes. Diana reached one hand weakly to her collarbone, as if she could deny what she wouldn't find, and the realization crossed her face that she had only seconds left.

"Rubens…" she wailed poignantly, and gripped Pearl's hand with what little strength she had. "One light is hidden by another… only Blackpearl can stop her… Find her!" Diana's look was vain hope, and Pearl wasn't sure she could fill that hope, but she looked back into Diana's eyes and nodded, slowly. It was enough; the fear faded away as Diana closed her eyes, and her breathing slowed.

Elazul and Pearl both stepped back respectfully, as Diana's body splintered before them into white motes of light and sailed away, back to the universe, back to Mana.

A long silence ensued, and Pearl instinctively snuggled against Elazul for comfort, he resting a brotherly arm around her. She caught Ariesa standing a few feet away, expression silently neutral.

Elazul turned to speak to Pearl softly. "We need to think... about ourselves, Jumi, and the jewel hunter..."

She knew what he meant. He wanted them to return to what they had meant to do from the start. It seemed that time was running out, and Elazul knew now he needed Pearl with him, he couldn't try to protect her by leaving her behind anymore. It would be as it always was, just the two of them.

Suddenly, just the two of them sounded terribly lonesome.

Elazul broke apart from her to walk a couple steps towards Ariesa. "Go away. Leave here. I should never have brought you into this."

Pearl recognized immediately the hurt in her eyes. "But - " Ariesa said, her voice painfully sad.

Elazul cut her off. "No buts! We have to go our own ways right now. Cut us loose, stay away! Too much has happened."

"And what happened before this wasn't enough?" Ariesa demanded, a hint of temper flaring.

"Don't you understand?" he yelled at her, and she shrank back. "It's too much, it's done! This isn't your fight, it's none of your business! You can't stay near me, it's over between us!"

Ariesa shrank back, fear and incredulity crossing her face. Suddenly, the anger drained right back out of Elazul, he visibly slumping. "I'm sorry," he said. Then, in a voice so soft Pearl could barely have made it out if it wasn't for the hurt emanating from his core, "I wish there could have been more."

Ariesa only stood there, now as still as stone, and Pearl needed no core to tell what the other woman was thinking and feeling.

Elazul did not say goodbye, just turning awkwardly towards the door. Pearl paused to exchange a final regretful look with Ariesa before joining the side of her knight.

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Nunuzac directed one of his assistants to shuffle through some papers. They were all disorganized; he hadn't had a good assistant since Esmeralda… well, better not to touch on that. It was hardly the only regret he had about her.

Then that other Jumi, Elazul, had returned, asking questions about his race that Nunuzac wished he could answer. And even the knowledge he had obtained… he did not like the how.

"Am I done, Master Nunuzac?" squeaked the student who was helping him, and he waved her away. The library door shut behind her, and he found himself suddenly in the blissful solitude of the empty room.

"Hello, Nunuzac," came a voice, and Nunuzac swiveled.

There, framed by the still-closed window, stood the strange bird-wisdom Pokiehl, his eyes hidden by that odd straw hat as always. Nunuzac had run into most of the wisdoms in passing over the years, but buried in the relative obscurity of the magic academy as he was, he doubted any of them had ever sought him out before. "What do you want?' he asked suspiciously."

Pokiehl ignored the question, sweeping a glance over the papers that still littered the table. "You are studying the return of the Goddess, are you not?"

"Aren't we all a little worried about that?" Nunuzac replied.

Pokiehl only chuckled, striding towards the table and circling it. "She will be here soon, Nunuzac. The sproutlings tell me so."

"Sproutlings only utter nonsense, garbage that comes from nowhere and means nothing," Nunuzac insisted. They ran oddly rampant through Geo, and they never said anything worth mentioning.

"Nonsense, maybe. But from nowhere…" Pokiehl paused. "Their thoughts are thoughts of Mana, of life. They are thoughts of the Goddess. And they are speaking to you."

Nunuzac remained unconvinced. "What are they trying to tell me?"

"Something that you have forgot. How to feel, how to desire." That hit a little close to home. "You have come to think of desire as dark, have you not? Only in emptiness do you find peace. But that is not what She desires. The tree has wisdom, the tree has wants."

_Elazul_. Nunuzac suddenly thought. The young man was angry, and lost, but underneath it all was an overwhelming desire that drove him still, that remembered how it was to want and need.

"It is not that way for me," Nunuzac said defensively. "Everything I wanted, pursued, desired… all fell apart on me, and left me with nothing but regrets." He turned away.

"You regret, but you do not truly understand, Nunuzac," Pokiehl told him. "The universe itself wishes to speak to you, if you will only listen. You must have some faith left in Her to even bother to protest. Grab that, remember, and imagine, and wisdom will be yours."

Nunuzac swiveled once more, but Pokiehl was gone.

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Sultan was a beautiful, warm, city, filled with the life of all who crossed through its port, but little of it spoke to Ariesa.

She sat morosely at the port, watching the ships coming and going, ships that wouldn't take her anywhere she needed to go, but she wanted to hop on anyway.

"Vadise suspected she might be here," came a familiar voice.

Ariesa started, turning to see Sierra standing by her, all staid confidence that she wished she could emulate. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you, obviously," the dragoon replied. "Come with me. There is many things we should talk about." Sierra offered her hand, and Ariesa let herself be pulled to her feet.

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Pearl was thinking. Elazul was right, they _did_ need to think.

She spent a lot of time thinking... but now she was starting to _remember_.

It came in spurts sometimes, and sometimes she couldn't really retain much, but fragmentary slivers were returning, bits and pieces that she couldn't make sense out of but that were all the more frustrating for the fact that she knew they must mean _something_.

She sunk into the soft bed of the inn, feeling sleep overtake her, hoping that some of the memories that surfaced would be retained until the next day.

_A woman in the desert. Not herself, far too tall, in gray silks. The woman was looking… for something? For someone?_

_Not herself? Blackpearl shook her head. What was she thinking? She had always been herself. And she was here to find Alexandra, or the Sword of Mana, whichever came first. She had lost track of how long she had been traveling the world, following the thinnest clues that might lead her to the sword, going where here core dictated it might be found. And now… nothing._

_It had been meant to save the Jumi by saving Florina. Now… as she had found out, Florina was gone, and there was only one hope for the Jumi, decimated as they had been by Deathbringer's wars. It made her sad to think the Jumi had come to this, and even worse, Alexandra picking them off, one by one, betraying the things that were at the core of _being_ Jumi – togetherness, unity._

_Her core gave a jolt, the response of something of itself nearby. She turned, waiting, realizing she knew this already, something opposite but completely in tune – young where she was old, living and breathing where she felt worn out through and through._

_Elazul stopped short. "You," he said, surprised and not having time to think of anything more clever to say. She had never given him her name, nor did she plan to now. It did not matter._

"_Knight of Jumi. What brings you out here to these deserts?" she asked him, noncommittally._

"_I could ask the same of you." His voice was heated – not angry, but passionate. It could be his strength – or his undoing._

"_I am doing the same thing I am always doing," she told him, and left it at that, waiting for his own answer._

_He paused for a minute. "I came to find my destiny. Someone told me to." He looked battered, underfed. If there was ever a stone that had lost its sparkle, it was him; though his right arm shone strangely crystalline. It nagged at Blackpearl. "I've been trying to find my destiny for as long as I can remember. But... it seems I have none." He laughed bitterly._

"_I know that look. A knight without a guardian. A Jumi all alone in the world is like a pebble in the desert." She grabbed a handful of sand and let it run through her fingers for emphasis, trying to ignored the emptiness in her own heart. "And we are all alone, so there is no Jumi."_

"_Florina's tears will bring the Jumi back," he said proudly. There was a splash of hope in his eyes, a flame that burned with little to feed on._

"_Florina is gone." Harsh, but she couldn't give this man false hope. He would have to hack it on his own, or not. "There is only one hope."_

"_Hope? Tell me what that hope is," Elazul replied. She waved a hand over in his direction._

"_Nothing that need concern you, young knight," she replied, and turned as if to leave._

"_Doesn't concern me?" he yelled forcefully. She paused and turned back. "You keep secrets from your own kind, to divide us even more and help destroy us even more? You know the Jumi blame you for what happened! For not being there to help defend from Deathbringer, for allowing Florina to be taken, for all the destruction, they say Lady Blackpearl is to blame!"_

_She looked only coldly at him. "And what do you say?" Elazul said nothing, only clenched his fists, the right one wrapped instinctively around the sword she had given him. "You should not speak of things you know nothing about, things you were not there for, though I was. If you think you can do better, be my guest. What would you have me do? Better yet, what are you going to do about it?"_

_His anger faded and his shoulders slumped. "Pearl… let me protect you… just one more time…"_

"_Pearl?" she asked him. "Who is Pearl?"_

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Elazul leaned over Pearl, where she had been thrashing in her sleep, unusual for his guardian. He brushed her hair back from where sweat beaded on her forehead.

"Pearl," he whispered over her. "Let me protect you, just one more time… it's only the two of us alone…" He wondered how much longer he would be able to do just that, how much longer before the jewel hunter came for them as well. She must be running out of Jumi, and they were running out of time. He wished they were running towards something instead.

He had been so angry when he had met her, and for the longest time it had been his anger that kept him moving, he and Pearl against the rest of the world. He had felt like that for a long time, but now he was wondering if that was really true. The Jumi were a part of Mana, a creative, not destructive, force; but those who had tried to destroy the Jumi had broken that apart.

He wished he could destroy it all, walk away, but part of him wouldn't let go, wouldn't stop looking for _one_ little thing that might bring it all back. He had wanted to give up, many times, he thought, looking down at his arm; it would have been easier. But he realized that wasn't what he was cut out for. There was more strength to be found in love, and that was what he was discovering.

Even if he had to push her away. And for once, Pearl wasn't the "her" he thought of.

He didn't want to remember her. He needed to forget. But the harder he pushed the memories away, the more his imagination took hold, he remembering how she looked, how she laughed, how she felt, and his desire threatened to overwhelm him. But he could not allow himself such a luxury.

Pearl seemed to have settled, and he flopped on his own bed, only to find himself staring at the ceiling with random thoughts and worries filling his own head, as if he had absorbed all her fears into himself. He got up to move to the balcony, and he remembered talking with Ariesa there on another late night, so many days ago.

But she was long gone from Geo, and he was here alone.

Geo. All the magic in this city… yet the place where two of his kind had died. If not more; he shuddered to think of what he might not know. Nunuzac had given him all he knew, but so much of it was ideas, theory, mystery.

He hoped the city could give him some answers, one way or another. He wondered if there was any hope for the Jumi left.

And he wondered if he would every have anything he desired for himself.


	43. Secrets: Swords

**Author's note: **Sorry! I'm lagging on updates! I'm actually spending a lot of my free time on this. Problem is… I don't have a lot of free time to begin with. I've overworked, underslept, and broke…

Hey, anyone want to sponsor me for chapter updates?

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**43. Secrets: Swords**

_Sappho was hardly a father_, thought Elazul. It had never been that way; it had always been more master and apprentice. But it was better than nothing.

The older man saw to Elazul, in his own way. "You're meant to be a knight, I think," Sappho had told him, when he was still a boy, but a boy old enough to understand some of where he had come from and where he was meant to go.

"Why?" Elazul had asked insistently. "How can you tell one way or the other?"

"It has to do with drive, with determination," he was told. "The guardians… they are the ones meant to preserve the powers of Mana, and for that reason, they stay out of harm's way. You won't be able to do that; you'll throw yourself right in the middle of things…" Sappho stopped, and turned, looking morosely in the distance at… nothing. "Instead of hiding from them."

It clicked for Elazul quickly enough. "You were a guardian."

Sappho turned back, eyes blank and weary. "I was," he said. "No matter now, I have no tears of healing, and my knight is long gone."

Sappho, being a guardian, had never been any sort of a warrior, but still, in every town they stayed in, no matter how short or how long a time they were there, he made sure Elazul had the best training. For his own part, Elazul took to the sword like a fish to water. There was something about the feeling of the sword, about its power… it was both exhilarating, and frightening, at the same time.

They never stayed in any place long enough for Elazul to make many friends, leaving before they got too comfortable in a spot, eventually traversing the world as the years rolled by. _Was Sappho running away from something, or running to? Or both? _he wondered.

Not that it really mattered. He had understood even as a small child that it was a world in which it was safer for the Jumi to set themselves apart. Sappho had definitely seen to his history in that respect, relaying all the pain and suffering the race had endured before the Empire shattered them once and for all. It was from Sappho that he knew he was the youngest, a Jumi who had been made when none more were expected, when the Jumi were all but dead to the world.

Elazul listened to it all, angry for what had happened, and angrier still that his history had been lost before he came to be. Sometimes, when he was alone, he would reach for his core, reach for that part that was more _himself_ than any other piece, and burn with the desire to reclaim all that had been lost, to bring the Jumi back together, for the race to be as one once again.

Like any other boy, Elazul grew to adulthood, his body filling out and up; and Sappho noted appraisingly that was about as far as he could expect to age. "There could be worse things than to look young forever," Sappho told him. Elazul might have agreed, if he did not _feel _so old already.

And he definitely felt old the day Sappho told him it was time to separate. The older man stood stiff and straight, and though Elazul met him eye-to-eye, Sappho's sudden distant manner made him feel boyish all over again.

Sappho's voice was different, too; it had a dignity, a presence, Elazul had never known the man to have. "Elazul, Jumi of Lapis Lazuli," he began formally. "You can learn no more from me. I have the power to declare you a Knight of the Half-Lucidia. The destiny of a knight is to protect a guardian, and it is time for you to find one . If only we were still in the Jumi city… it would be easy enough for you to find one... but Etansel is no longer. You will have to find your own path now. Are you afraid?"

"No," Elazul replied truthfully. Perhaps a little angry, and definitely anxious, but as much to go as to stay.

"That's too bad. You should be," Sappho said piercingly. "Knowing who you are and how the world will see you… where anyone, everyone can be an enemy, and you will find yourself all alone… if you feel anything, you should be afraid."

Elazul did not like the subject, and changed it quickly. "Where will you go?"

"Somewhere where I can disappear for a while." Sappho's shoulders slumped, and his old mentor looked careworn once again. "Somewhere I can find some dreams again."

A long moment passed, as Elazul quietly contemplated the past, present, and future of the Jumi. "Where should I go?" he inquired, half-pleading, suddenly realizing he had no idea where to begin.

Sappho closed his eyes for a minute, and Elazul wondered if he was simply being ignored, until Sappho finally opened them with a faraway sort of seriousness. "The desert," he said. "Begin in the desert. I feel… something, some sort of pull there."

Elazul shrugged. "Good a place as any."

There didn't seem to be any point to waiting longer, and Elazul picked up his things and left, leaving Sappho to his dreams and Elazul to find his own.

------------------------------------

The desert air was blistering hot, but Blackpearl paid it no more mind than she had on any other day she had spent in it.

She had searched for longer than she cared to contemplate, following lingering traces of Mana wherever she would find them, finding little worthwhile at the end. Leires, Mekiv, Pedan – but – nothing. No Florina, and no Sword of Mana. It had been long since she had been able to sense her bond to Florina, but she couldn't allow herself to believe the Clarius was dead.

The trail she followed now was faint, but only in the sense of age and permanence settling the flows, until they had neatly intermingled with the feeling of the desert itself. The _personality_ of that Mana, for want of a better word, was something else altogether. And it was that special something that gave her more hope than she had been able to muster in a while, more than she had had since the Jumi city had been destroyed.

She followed what her core told her to the bottom of one of the sandfalls, walls of sand that tumbled off the cliffs above whenever the wind blew. She knelt on the hot sand, placing her hammer against a rock wall off to the side, and, ignoring the dirt smudging her dress - it was gray anyway - she scrabbled in the dirt.

It was less than a foot down… but it was there. Her hand grasped cool metal, and a jolt electrified her, surging through her core with its memories.

In a frenzy, she scooped away handfuls of sand, finally unveiling the hilt of a sword. She pulled on it with all her might, stumbling backwards slightly as it came loose from the packed sand that had held it prisoner.

For a moment, she thought she might have found the Sword of Mana, but cool logic crushed hope before it could lift her up too high. This wasn't it. There wasn't enough Mana, for one, but she just knew, it wasn't what she was looking for. But it was here for _something _- or _someone_, she thought.

It certainly wasn't for her. Blackpearl had never learned to use a sword in her life. She was handy with a few weapons - staff, spear - but she preferred the simple and effective weight of a heavy hammer.

She sat on one of the flatter rocks, and examined the sword more closely.

It was obsidian, with the incredibly sharp edge that only that mineral could produce. The surface was black swirled with red, and the handle precious Lorant silver, and Mana wound throughout to keep it from breaking. It spoke of being as sword of power, of destruction… but she did not fear it. It was all a matter of whose hands it found itself in.

Something else about it resonated with her. Something... _lost_. "Are you lonely?" she asked the sword, smirking slightly after at what she would look like talking to a sword. If anyone was around to hear.

It almost seemed to answer. Well, whether it was waiting for someone in particular, or taking whatever it could get, she could certainly keep it company for a little while.

She settled back on the rocks. For some reason, she didn't think she had long to wait.

------------------------------------

The sun had risen and set once, then twice, when the sword seemed to whisper something to her.

She pulled it closer, and let the flows of Mana reach out from her core to touch it, to find out what it wanted her to know. It was faint, but most definitely there, someone seeming to follow the flows, heading towards her.

Shortly enough, she felt it without the sword's aid. _A Jumi_, she contemplated, slightly startled and wondering who it could be, way out in the desolation of the desert.

The man who ambled into her view, however, was no one she had seen before. Judging from his expression, he had not been able to sense her nearness as she had him; she covered her surprise smoothly, but he didn't bother to try.

Lady Blackpearl slipped easily enough into the cool dignity that had always served her well. "Greetings, Jumi," she began formally. "I am surprised we have not met before."

His manner was sullen, and his core was… scattered, unfocused, untrained. It affirmed what she had already suspected – he was young, probably the youngest of them all. How, why, and a hundred other questions bothered her, but she kept hers silent and let him ask his own first.

"Who are you?" he asked, simply, a trace of arrogant demand in his voice, and his eyes… piercing blue, bluer than her own nearly-grey, meeting hers with reckless defiance.

She was unfazed, merely shifting her collar slightly to reveal the core beneath, and his eyes widened in surprise. He knew now she was another of his kind; but as many questions as she had for him, she could see he had many more for her. But instead he just stared, puzzled, wordless.

"You don't know me?" she said mildly, though her pride was a little injured that he didn't. "Pity. You seem to be short on knowledge of your own history." Miffed, he did not seem to notice that she had neatly ignored his question. "Yet you must have learned something; you are obviously a knight."

"How can you tell?" he asked warily.

"The way you carry yourself. Uncertain, untrained, yes, but your choice is clear. Yet you have obviously barely begun, you don't even carry a weapon." She motioned to the black sword in her lap. "I believe this is meant for you."

Of that, she was certain; the sword had been quietly thrumming its eagerness to meet the young knight. _But why him?_ she wondered.

He stepped forward, and she sat upright, stretching out the weapon to him. The flesh of his right hand touched her own hand around the hilt, and she started in surprise. As she released her hold, and he took the weapon in his own hand, she shook her head slightly, wondering… what that odd resonance of memory had been, lost almost as soon as it had begun.

His arrogant manner had faded, and he lifted the weapon, examining the length of the blade with a look of prideful ownership, and wonder. "I am grateful for the gift," he said, with absolute politeness.

"It is not a gift," she told him. "The sword was yours to begin with. The sword is a path; the sword is your fate. The sword is filled with both the past, and the future." He looked at her with a twinge of nervousness. "What is your future, then? You say you are a knight, but you have no guardian?"

"A guardian? Where should I find one?" he asked, baffled and saddened.

"I cannot answer that for you. You must draw on yourself to find courage. I must now move on myself," she said, leaping to the sand, and turning to leave.

"Wait!" The young man's voice followed her. "Who are you, really?"

She paused, and turned to regard him seriously. "Once, they called me the seventh moon. Now, I wonder if all I am is lost." He had no answer to that, and she tried to push him out of her mind as she disappeared into the dunes of the desert, searching again for another trail.

------------------------------------

Elazul had spent months in the desert and the cities beyond, but the woman in the desert had been the only other Jumi he had run across. He found himself spending weeks, then months, alone, with the sword his only companion, and sometimes he would take it out and run one finger along the edge. It had a power all its own, and that comforted him, as much as it bothered him that the power was all for nothing. He still had no guardian.

It was making him profoundly depressed, even without the other things on his mind. The woman in the desert… he wondered how many other things there were that he had not been told.

Elazul decided to track down Sappho, and pry some answers out of him.

That, of course, was easier said than done. Elazul had criss-crossed the world all over again, following hints and clues, when he finally found himself knocking on the door of a small cottage on the beach, just at the outskirts of Polpota.

He had calmed some since entering the town. It was a peaceful seaside hamlet, completely at odds with the fury into which he had worked himself. He had toned down his anger down as best he could to gather some directions from the town's citizens; though whether he was given them because they really wanted to help, or were merely intimidated by the young warrior in their midst, he did not know, or care.

When Sappho opened his door, barely registering surprise, Elazul strode in without waiting for an invitation. He unbuckled his sword belt, dropping it and the weapon it contained noisily on the table, and freely making himself at home. Sappho did not object.

"You didn't tell me everything," Elazul began, accusation ringing through his voice.

"I told you what you needed to know," Sappho replied dismissively.

"And how can you judge that?!" Elazul demanded. "A Jumi woman I ran into in the desert, someone I should have known, and I didn't. She was nice enough to give me this souvenir, I guess - " he said, gesturing to the discarded belt on the table, "but there wasn't much else she had to say to me."

"A woman?!" Sappho had seemed to hear nothing past that, leaning over the table with hands gripping the edge. "You found her?! Tell me what she looked like!"

Sappho's sudden reaction, intense and uncharacteristic, took Elazul aback. "Tall, only a hair shorter that me, if that," he began carefully, trying to piece together the image. Her presence, her composure, had made more of an impression on him than any mere physical feature, and now, he struggled to remember the details. "Light eyes, sort of a grayish-blue, and silvery-blond hair, nearly white. Dressed in gray silks - "

"_Enough_," Sappho interrupted, and Elazul noticed, oddly, that the look in his eyes was more of pain than anything else. "Why didn't you stay with her?!"

"She didn't seem to want me around," Elazul retorted. "What would you have me do?"

Sappho wilted. "You are right. You…" he began, hesitantly. "You are not from the world I came from. I had to split off my mind from my core, from who I was, in order to survive. I was hoping to keep you free, free of everything that had weighed down the Jumi…. Free to choose your own path.

"But it seems you achieved a small victory, at least," he concluded, reaching for Elazul's sword and pulling it out of its sheath, a peaceful smile crossing his face as his eyes traveled down the length of the dark blade.

Elazul tensed involuntarily, squeezing his fists to avoid reaching for the sword. _His_ sword. The silence hung over the room until Sappho finally turned to look at him, lowering the sword as he caught Elazul's expression, setting it down softly and reverently.

It sat there, between the two, both staring at it as if it would speak, and save either of them the trouble.

Sappho's head hung towards the floor. "I apologize," the man finally whispered, "for not being willing to do more, tell you more… You should go back to the desert. _She_ might be the one to set your path, to lead you to where you must go."

The strange woman again, pushing him even from so far away. "Who is she?" Elazul demanded. Sappho only narrowed his eyes.

"Such a simple, yet complicated question, with an easy, but difficult answer. I could try to tell you… but… I think it is better that, again, you must find out such things for yourself." Sappho turned away, and the finality hung in the air before them, a sharp and unspoken dismissal.

Elazul shrugged, and with no further words, picked up his weapon and left to go once again.

------------------------------------

The desert was hardly growing on him.

The thing with living indefinitely, Elazul realized, was that time started to gain a whole other sort of meaning. Months could pass by in ennui and lack of direction - but there were always more to be had, so it didn't matter.

It wasn't the time that bothered him; he had long since lost track of how long he had been in the desert. He knew little, and cared less. No, what was really bothering him was the sheer _sameness_ of it all, the sense of failure that hung over every day that he found nothing. Frustration had long since descended into demoralization and depression, but somehow, he was still trudging along, moving on without being sure of the reason why.

He flexed his right arm experimentally. It had been flesh when he had reentered the desert; but now, he could barely remember what it felt like before. The tingle of the crystal that now comprised it had become normal. On this day, he choose not to remember what had made it that way; but he couldn't deny it, an eternally sorrowful reminder, to survive, and persevere.

Normally he had little direction, but for the past several hours, something had been… pulling… at him. How, or why, he did not know, but he followed it instinctively; it wasn't as if he had anyplace better to go.

Whatever it was… it spoke to him, sang to him, reaching into his very core, and finally he could see that it was a copse of trees, and oasis in the desert, visible in the distance, to which he was drawn. The feeling mounted in intensity as he drew closer; the trees of the oasis whapped branches at him, but he ignored them as he pushed his way through, a strange thirst filling him.

But it was not water that he was headed towards – it was something else; and he burst into the oasis to find nothing that he had expected. He thought at first that it was some sort of heat-induced mirage, but he shook his head to clear it, and nothing changed. Determined, he ran forward.

It was a girl. _Woman_, he corrected himself, as he pulled her unconscious form into his arms; she was small, but definitely not that of a child. Her body had the shape of an adult, and she had a pale beauty accentuated by the white dress she wore. And one more thing… he _knew_, even before he spied the telltale sparkle below her neck.

_She is a Jumi._

Thoughts of whomever he had been sent here to find flew out of his head completely, as he tenderly brushed some of her silvery-blond hair away from her eyes. He put his ear reflexively to her chest; she was breathing, but he knew she would be. That was not the thing that mattered most. His eyes moved a short ways above the lungs that still breathed and the heart that still beat, to the jewel that let those both live on.

_Her core_… it was a pearlescent silver, but cutting angrily through it was a deep scratch, and his stomach sank. Gently, he placed one finger of his right hand on her core, and it responded to his touch. Colors swirled within, almost agitated, dark grays wrapping around them and nearly suffocating them. But slowly, the light won out, as the colors seemed to settle, finally blending together themselves to make her core shine with a pure whiteness, and the woman breathed softly, her body relaxing, somehow more at peace. He pulled her a little closer, the strength of his stone arm supporting her as he gently drew her up to a sitting position.

Then she opened her eyes.

------------------------------------

Sappho was mournful.

The ocean lay before him, and he gazed into the distance, brooding. "I had such hopes for the boy," he said. "But he failed. I suppose he was too young, after all."

"Dead?" the mermaid asked, swishing her tail slightly above water. Her upper half rested on the pier, regarding the Jumi with curiosity.

"No... it's her. I can't tell what happened to her core, but... I don't think she's gone, exactly, but it's almost like her, not her, you know?"

"Who?" asked the mermaid.

"The pearl," he replied.

She looked perplexed. "We have lots of pearls, down at the bottom of the ocean."

"It's not the same," he told her. "There are pearls of a different sort, that don't come from the sea, but fall from the moon. So many colors to it, so mysterious, and it travels from owner to owner." He sighed. "She was impossible to catch, in more ways than one."

"A lost moon," she giggled.

"Maybe," he told her, and went silent again.

"So many dreams," he said, half mumbling. "Drowned, along with everything else. Perhaps Diana had the right idea."

He pulled a knife of Byzel gold – _Vizel_, he corrected himself, realizing oddly he had used the name from his youth - from his pocket, and paused a minute to admire it. Delicate, but dangerously sharp, almost like a small sword. It hovered in his grip, hesitating near his chest; one thing they had learned from the hunts, was how easily a core could be removed.

Doubt spoke, but he didn't want to hear it, and he ignored its whispers as he leaned forward to place the knife's point at the edge of the sapphire below. _Heart, mind, soul, all in one_, he pondered, looking at its blue sparkle. _Was anything short of the Goddess meant to hold all those things together?_

There seemed to be no boundary between his skin and the jewel, but it only took a gentle push for the blade to find the edge between. Sappho gritted his teeth as the core pulsed in protest. _Only a jewel_, he told himself. Blood trickled slightly, but that would have healed soon enough; it was an injury far more serious that he was aiming for.

It was only a quick flick that removed the sapphire from his chest.

He felt as if the breath had been knocked out of him, and a wave of dizziness overtook him, but his first remained tight around the extracted gem. He looked at it in a detached manner, noticing not the blood that now marred it nor the slivers of flesh that still clung to it, but its _sparkle_, its clarity.

His legs protested as he stood shakily, but they kept him upright just long enough to hurl the sapphire into a sea as blue as the gem. "Go join the pearls," he whispered, and fell forward, his body dissolving into cobalt motes before he hit the ground.

------------------------------------

The mermaid watched quizzically as the jewel flew through the air and into the ocean. She noted where she had last seen it splash, and with a quick flick of her tail, dove down to the bottom of the ocean.


	44. Legends: Clarity

**44: Legends: Clarity**

Ariesa was getting the hang of the spear. Sierra had taken to practicing with her, once it became apparent that her lightning-quick knives were the only things that could stand up to the weapon. Supposedly, the spear was a slower weapon than the sword, but Ariesa rapidly learned to use its light weight and leverage to her advantage, and it was beginning to feel more natural than the sword ever had.

She had many reasons to learn. Every time she squeezed the shaft, she felt the scar her sword had slit across her palm. It didn't hurt, it was just an irritating irregularity the way scars were, but she knew what had happened to give her that mark, and she clenched her teeth with her anger, her desire for vengeance.

And every time she felt that scar… she thought of Elazul. Another wound that would not heal.

"Watch out!" Ariesa was pulled back into the present by knives slicing at her, only the practiced skill of the user keeping them from creating all-new scars on Ariesa's body. Instead, all she suffered was a humiliating slam against the ground.

Sierra discarded her knives with a clatter to help Ariesa up. "You forgot yourself," Sierra said in the lecturing tone she sometimes adopted. "You forgot the connection between mind and body. That, it is a sacred thing, being part of the Goddess herself."

"I'm trying to fight with it, not make love to it," Ariesa protested.

"They are not so different," Sierra replied. "It must feel close to you, feel like part of you."

"It does, a bit," Ariesa admitted. "But… it's weird too. I was always taught the sword was a holy weapon. It's taking some adjustment."

"There's more to it, I think. What's the matter? You were doing great, then it was like your mind was somewhere else."

"It was." Ariesa bent to pick up her prized Stargazer. Sierra watched with cool eyes.

They were in Luon, a small seaside hamlet at the eastern edge of the highway. A quiet place, to which they had traveled for no good reason other than Ariesa was not yet ready to return home. The tall peaks that supported the Lorant Tableland loomed over the town, and somehow they gave Ariesa a feeling of comfort, of security, that she had not felt in some time.

A long moment passed, the one woman holding her spear and gazing south, the other looking at the first.

"It's him, isn't it?" Sierra said finally.

Ariesa wrapped her left hand around the fist that held the spear upright, letting her weight rest on the weapon for a moment. "I can't help it," she admitted grudgingly. "I know what he said. I know why he said it. But, Goddess, damn it, it still hurts!" She slammed the weapon against the ground for emphasis, trying to distract herself from the tears welling up in her eyes. "Pearl normally looks so lost… and Elazul so angry… but suddenly they're both so…focused… and I'm no part of it!" she wailed, her shoulders shaking as the sobs finally burst.

That was the core of it, she knew; being left behind, being stuck once again in an inconsequential existence, when she had finally begun to understand something more. _Don't cry for a Jumi_, she told herself as tears escaped down her cheeks; but deep down, she knew she was crying for _herself_.

Sierra only stood there, compassion on her face, as Ariesa slumped to the ground, and led misery take its course. It was some time before it faded, leaving her with that empty, purified feeling; and she found herself looking to Sierra for something to fill it.

"And what would you do, if Elazul hadn't told you to leave?" the dragoon asked her softly.

Ariesa took a deep breath before answering; and still, the words took effort. "Go to them. I don't know why, but I want to. It's like I'm supposed to."

"Supposed to go? To Elazul, or to Pearl?" Sierra asked, pointedly, having no shame in getting to the heart of the matter.

Ariesa interlocked her hands over her knees, and rested her head on them. "Does it matter?" she asked.

Sierra paused at that. "No," she replied. "I guess not. You'll go there anyway."

Quiet settled over them as Sierra plopped down on the hot sand beside Ariesa. "It's never so simple to decide what to do," she said, sighing. "I thought… I thought Larc was doing things of his own free will. So I made my choices accordingly, even though it hurt me to have to fight my brother. But that was not true, so those choices were wrong, and that caused the most pain of all." She waved one hand in the air. "Do you see what I am saying?"

"I do," Ariesa said cautiously. "The need to know the truth."

Sierra looked at her, piercingly, but oddly, it did not make Ariesa uncomfortable or intimidated. "The truth hurts," she said softly, in contrast to her sharp expression. "It hurt me, and it hurt you as well."

Ariesa felt a pang of regret, because she knew Sierra was _right_. The two women met eyes for a long moment, a moment of knowing, and understanding.

"You have suffered; you have been tested," Sierra continued, "but you have been strengthened because of it. You have some of the wisdom that you need to choose your path, but you are sitting back. Why?"

Ariesa had no answer. _It's because it's what I've always been_, what her gut response; but it wasn't the truth. She _had_ changed, in a way there was no going back from. But she hadn't endured anything worse than Sierra, and the dragoon had survived; if Sierra could do it, then she could as well.

She looked at Sierra with determination. "I'm not going to stay back any longer."

Sierra looked at her with an expression of sisterly pride. "Then if you are wise enough to know that, you are strong enough to follow through." She reached one furred hand to gently pull Ariesa to her feet, and together they walked back towards the small oceanside town.

------------------------------------

"Hurry up, Bud!" came Lisa's voice. She was already outside the house, impatiently waiting for him.

Bud grumbled slightly. Thoma was his friend as well, but Lisa was always the more eager to go visit the guy. It made him a little jealous; he was so used to it being just himself and his sister, that he found he didn't especially like sharing her attention.

He stewed slightly, as she urged him towards Domina; and it annoyed him even a little bit more that she didn't particularly seem aware of it. Before, she might tease him, or give him a hard time, but at least she would _notice_. Now…

Things happened, he knew. They didn't have the same attention from Ariesa either that they used to. It was one thing when she was just coming and going, but now, it was part of _herself_ that was leaving. And going to a guy named Elazul.

"They're falling in _love_," Lisa had sighed girlishly, when they had talked about it a few days before.

"Love, schmove," said Bud glumly. "He's good-looking, she's pretty, I think they're just getting it on."

"_Bud_!" Lisa exclaimed, shocked. "Is that all you think about?"

That was practically her new motto for him. _Is that all you think about?_ It was one thing she _had_ noticed about her brother recently. He couldn't really help it; girls – _women_ – just seemed different to him now. Far more interesting.

Having said that… she must be going through the same thing, more or less. But even as close as the two siblings were, they hadn't quite been able to talk about it yet.

"We're here!" Lisa shrieked as they crossed under the sign that indicated the borders of Domina. Thoma was already waiting for them outside the inn. Lisa gave him a friendly hug, squeezing him hard, Bud settled for a handshake.

They meandered towards the peaceful west edges of Domina, and laid out their lunch on the soft grass, tossing bites to the small, tame animals that skittered through. It was the place where he and Lisa had generated their monster pumpkins, he remembered with a twinge of embarrassment. Really, Lisa had been right, what _had_ he been thinking of?

They made small talk, but eventually drifted over to the topic that was on all of their minds. "So, what do you think is going on with the Jumi?" Bud began.

"I'm not sure, I thought Ariesa was staying with Pearl, and then they left together, in an awful hurry," Lisa said, biting her lip. "Maybe they're looking for that Sandra woman. You know, the jewel hunter," she finished for Thoma.

Thoma snapped his head up sharply. "A tall redhead?" he asked, his face going ashen white. "Fights with knives?"

"That's her," Lisa said, suddenly concerned. "What's wrong?"

Thoma pulled up his shirt partway to show angry brown scars across his chest and abdomen, healed but barely faded. "She's the one who gave me these."

Lisa gasped, and Bud felt a knot in his stomach. He had figured that it was some Empire attack that had left Thoma half-dead the day they met him, and they knew a jewel hunter had fled with the core they had come to Polpota to find, but this…

"How could she?" asked Lisa, and Bud wondered if those where actually tears welling in her eyes.

"She didn't like competition for her prizes," Thoma said, unusual bitterness crossing his face.

"What do you mean?" asked Bud carefully.

Thoma looked at them in surprise. "I hadn't realized how little is know out here about the Empire, or its history," he told them. "But… the Empire was the one who destroyed the Jumi city." Lisa gasped.

"Pearl said something like that," Bud said, trying to remember some months back. "It was when you went back to Geo," he told Lisa hurriedly, as she looked at him questioningly.

"Well, they did a good job of wrecking the place," Thoma continued, "only Deathbringer found out that he couldn't the power he needed from the cores, not with the type of magic he was using. I don't even know what he did with those cores, or if they were just thrown away like trash. He turned instead to the 'dragon stones' – I think those were the Mana Stones that Ariesa was looking for – but I guess the dragons put a stop to that somehow. Finally, the Empire decided to look for the Sword of Mana, and they started looking for the cores again, to guide them to it."

"I'm scared," Lisa admitted in a shaky voice, and Thoma put one hand slightly around her shoulders to comfort her. "So there's all these people looking for cores… what about Elazul and Pearl? Are they going to be safe?"

"I'm sure they will be, Lisa," Thoma replied soothingly, though his confidence sounded a little forced. "Besides, Ariesa's with them, right? So they have someone on their side."

Bud was a little scared as well, but… he had a secret, of sorts. He had been trying out magic the way Vadise had taught him, and… it was powerful, chaotic stuff. It was not just a new type of magic, it was a new way of looking at things… it made him realize that there were many things that could change, many things that could not be controlled… but many ways things could work out for the best.

It was a sort of clarity that gave him comfort, and quietly, he wondered if everyone else was coming to realize the same.

------------------------------------

Escad stood staring at the waterfall, thinking about how much had changed since the last time he had been there. And who he had been with that day.

"Matilda," he whispered to the cascading water. This place reminded him of her more than any other, and was far more pleasant that the dreamweaving room, its cold and dark only broken by those twin torches.

Matilda would always be his greatest love. Ariesa… had been a passing fancy, but he was pretty much over it. Besides, he didn't particularly care to get his ass kicked by Elazul to prove a point. It wasn't that he doubted his prowess in a fight, but… Jumi were always sort of an unknown variable.

In more ways than one. He wished Ariesa the best of luck with the man.

Twinges of light kept distracting him, flitting at the edges of his peripheral vision, irritating him to no end. Time to time, he could almost make out – no, he didn't want to see them. Finally, he sat, and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to recapture the feeling of peace he had only minutes before.

It did not work. They decided to speak to him instead.

_Holy Knight,_ the whispers said, though not out loud. _Fallen one. We are not so different, you and we, _they echoed inside his skull.

"Where are you?" Escad demanded, eyes snapping open to see… nothing. "Show yourselves!"

The voices continued, ignoring him. _You know the darkness, but you are coming back to the light,_ they said. _There is always light within the darkness._

Escad briefly considered running away, but realized, how cowardly that would be, and suddenly, furiously, stood his ground.

_You know the dark, you know the light, _the fairies continued, their sing-song voices lulling him hypnotically. _You know the balance. You know the Goddess._

"Goddess," Escad sneered slightly.

_The Goddess. __Power and love. Surrender and control. Mind and body. Destruction and creation. Despair and hope. Knowledge and its pitfall. She is all of these things._

"And what do I do with it?" Escad asked, feeling very silly talking to the empty air.

_Secrets and legends. Order and chaos. Choice and fate. Mana and life… __Lost memories must be regained, imagination must be reinspired… __The Goddess is in danger. _

Escad had given up on fighting them, and plopped on the ground next to the clear pool into which the water spilled. He let their words lull him into a trance-like state.

_You can understand, _they chattered urgently. _You know with what She struggles._

In a flash of brilliant, sparkling clarity, Escad suddenly understood. _Were the things he had suffered, the things he had endured, _he wondered, _were they the same things that the Goddess herself faced?_

He looked into the pool, staring at his own face, contemplating for a long time. Slowly, to his surprise, doubt started to fade, and an odd sort of determination filled its place.

Abruptly, he stood, grabbing his sword from where he had left it on the ground, and he resolutely strode back towards Gato. He didn't know where exactly he was going, but suddenly… _somewhere_ seemed better than nowhere.

And following him the whole way, were the last words of the fairies.

_The Goddess is in danger…_

------------------------------------

"The Goddess is in danger," Vadise told Bahamut, as if the other dragon did not know.

Today, they met in the jungle, not far from the ruins of Pedan. _Mindas_, she reminded herself; _Pedan's spirit is no more_.

To her sensibilities, darkness seemed to permeate the place, and it made a little uncomfortable to be out of her element. Literally. The Tree element had always been the closest to the Goddess, to Mana, and now more than ever, she craved its comfort.

"What will we do?" she asked. "Only four dragons are left to guard the stones…"

Bahamut sniffed the air, and she wondered what it was he smelled. "It will not be long now, princess," he told her with near-fatherly affection. "The Goddess is close."

"I hope it is so," Vadise told him. "But… what happens when she returns?"

Bahamut's eyes drifted towards the moons that had begun to appear in the sky, though it was a couple hours until sunset still. Vadise turned her head the same direction, and together, the two dragons looked towards the sky, as if somewhere up there answers could be found.

"Vadise," Bahamut finally said, "perhaps it is time for you to take a more active role."

Vadise felt a knot of fear. _A thousand years it has been, _she thought to herself; _it has been too long, I cannot do it once again! _A thousand years she had quietly shaped things in the background, only to find herself called once again.

And it was a call she could not hope to ignore.

"Vadise!" A new voice called over to her, and she turned to see Sierra making her way through the trees, trampling the vegetation underneath in her hurry to return.

"Ariesa?" Vadise asked, putting all her questions into that one word.

Sierra fell to her knee; an unusual gesture that underscored the seriousness of what she had to say next. "She has made the choice she needs to, my liege," the dragoon replied formally. "Clarity is coming to her."

Vadise let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding. "That, at least, is good news. There is a lot riding on that. But," she continued, half to herself, "what of the Jumi? Is he a complement, or a complication?"

Sierra rose to her feet, but offered no answers.

"You have done well," Vadise told her dragoon, and Sierra beamed. "The rest, will play out the way it must. We must believe in that."

To Bahamut, she turned. "I must leave you now," se told him. "There are other dragons with whom I must speak."

------------------------------------

Larc meandered through the Underworld, Shadoles gleefully circling him wherever he went. He swatted them instinctively, and sunk into hi thoughts once again.

He was free… in a way. Drakonis was gone, never to return, from what Olbohn told him. But neither was he free to return to the world; it was his dragoon-bond that had kept him alive, or something like it, and now it was sheer willpower that kept him in the Underworld, that kept him from giving in and rejoining Mana.

Sierra would never forgive him if he did.

It was strange. Drakonis had been a cruel master, but at least he had known his place, his purpose. Now… he was just another restless soul, passing eternal days in a place where there _were_ no days.

He was used to the dreary red sameness of the Underworld, and barely noticed it anymore; but with a start, he suddenly took notice of the small, lithe blue dragon ambling towards him, as if she owned the place.

Larc paused, realizing the dragon was heading towards _him_. She paused, neck craning as she looked down curiously towards him – small, for a Dragon of Knowledge, still meant substantially taller than he was. "Who are you?" he asked warily. "And what are you doing here?"

"I am Tiamat," she answered, a voice clear and youthful. "The guardian of the Water Stone, and now the Fire Stone as well."

Larc found himself somewhat… unimpressed, after Drakonis's iron hand. "So," he said gruffly. "Do you want me to be your dragoon, or something?"

"Maybe," she said, cocking her head in a way that might almost have been flirtatious had her tone not been so dry.

"Whatever. Not like I have anything better to do. I'm stuck here forever, as far as I can tell." Larc let his own bad mood infect his voice, and Tiamat did not fail to notice.

"You think?" she asked mildly.

"Unless you have any better ideas?" Larc asked her.

"Some, perhaps," she said mysteriously. "All will become clear soon enough."

------------------------------------

The hot sun of Geo baked Ariesa just the same as it ever had. She did her best to ignore it as she wandered aimlessly through the streets, wondering where to find Elazul and Pearl, wondering why she was even so sure that they were still in the city. It wasn't something that she could explain, exactly, just a feeling… but even without knowing why, it was a feeling she would stake her life on.

With that sensation guiding her, her footsteps seemed to move of their own accord, her mind drifting away and unresisting. She blinked, and realized with a start that she was in front of the jewelry shop once again. Puzzled, she stepped out of the fiery summer sun into its cooling darkness.

It was nothing like she remembered. The cases were broken, the shattered bits of glass mingled with whatever costume jewelry remained; it looked like anything worthwhile had been taken long ago.

Ariesa stood among the wreckage, taking it all in, wondering what had happened since she had last left Geo, and puzzling over her next step. Should she look up Kathinja or Nunuzac and ask? Should she just try to keep moving? She stood there for a long time, contemplating the possibilities; and she was just about ready to turn and go, when the choice was made for her.

A ball of white she barely had a chance to recognize as Pearl barreled into the shop to hug her. "Ariesa! It's so good to see you again!" she burst out happily.

"And likewise," Ariesa greeted her warmly, suddenly nervous as the Pearl's inevitable companion appeared, framed in the light of the doorway. She looked away, not quite ready to face him. "What happened here?"

He sauntered in, discomfort infecting his usual borderline swagger. "This shop…" he said flatly, "…you can see what it looks like… and that's what it's looked like to this town all along. Only a few, like Nunuzac, seem to know anything about it; the rest swear it's been abandoned for as long as they can remember."

"We've been investigating a few things," Pearl interjected. "Something's strange here… I feel it in my core…"

Ariesa looked around carefully. She hadn't felt it at first, but now that Elazul and Pearl had arrived… "I can feel it as well," she agreed.

"It's like time is warped…" Elazul paused thoughtfully, though neatly avoiding looking at her. "Nunuzac thinks someone has created their own reality here… but what for?"

He finally met her eyes. Pearl, always sensitive to a mood, let go of Ariesa and moved back a few steps. Ariesa only stood in place, waiting for him to break the quiet that had descended over the trio. As did he, making for one awkward silence, broken only by a faint rustle of Pearl's dress as she wandered the room, pretending to look at the jewelry cases to give them some privacy.

"Why are you here?" His expression was unreadable, but his tone of voice… it _wanted_ to be angry, but was covered up with frustration, pain, and defeat.

She forced herself to meet his eyes, eyes that had that same piercing, intimidating gaze they had on the very first day she had seen him. This time, she did not look away, and met him stare for stare. "Because I wanted to be," she said simply.

"I told you to go away," he told her gruffly. "I told you to leave! I told you not to come back!"

His blue eyes flared, and something in Ariesa _snapped_, something breaking that she hadn't even realized was on such a fragile edge. "How _dare_ you," she half-snarled, "even try to tell me such a thing!"

"You can't - " he began, but now the floodgates had opened, and Ariesa couldn't stop the words from spilling out. "I _can_! I _will_! It's my choice, and you have _nothing_ to say about it!" A temper she didn't know was in her exploded with fury; she was sick of him playing with her, sick of the push and pull, just plain sick of taking his crap. "You can just _shove_ it, because I will do anything I damn well please! I will go anywhere I _want_, I will do whatever I like, and I will be whomever I want to be! And if I want to be with you, then I _will_ be!"

The last came out of nowhere, and Ariesa clamped her hand over her mouth, wondering if she had gone too far. Elazul had gone stone-still, his face almost paler than Pearl's, and his eyes were wide, as he just _stared_ at her, absolutely stunned and wordless.

She thought he was angry, and at first, that's all it looked like. But as they stood there, facing each other with palpable tension between them, slowly other things started creeping in. Pride… warmth… caring… and she found her own anger diminishing. She waffled, wondering if she should stand her ground, or give in, go to him.

"Hey!" Pearl's voice pulled their attention away, as both their heads swiveled to see her kneeling in front of a large box. She gazed at it with her familiar dreamlike expression. "It's like it's calling me…"

"Wait, Pearl!" Elazul said fearfully, and Ariesa instinctively grabbed his shoulder as he moved to stop his guardian.

"Hold on a minute, Elazul," she cautioned. "Leires. Mekiv. They called her, too. Maybe it's calling her for a reason…"

Pearl looked back at her knight, suddenly anxious, and waited until he gave a slow, reluctant nod. Determination crossed her face once again as she turned to the box; her hands trembled slightly as she undid the clasp, but then abruptly shoved up the lid with both hands. Light enveloped the room…

------------------------------------

"Where is this?" wondered Ariesa.

It seemed nothing more than a normal room, soft-lit and painted in peaceful colors, the only thing the least bit out of the ordinary - besides the lack of doors and windows - being an enormous, ornate gilded box that dominated the far half of the room.

"I sense..." Elazul looked faraway, fingering his blue core absentmindedly.

"It's so familiar..." Pearl sighed, knowing all too well what it was. It was a knight-guardian bond, but… not hers and Elazul's. And if that was what she was feeling… she knew what they had found.

The jewelry box – that was all she could think of to call it – pulled her, the feeling raising in intensity with every inch she came closer to it. It was her memories, her past, calling her, a hundred times stronger than the door of fate.

Pearl barely touched the latch, and it sprang open at her touch. She gasped as the lid rose of its own volition, and stared as it revealed its contents.

On the soft pink silk lining inside, lay stretched a young woman, barely more than a child. She was only a shade taller than Pearl, and slender almost to the point of frailty. Beautiful, delicate, precious. She raised her head, and chestnut hair lifted from the pillows to fall around her shoulders.

"Florina," she whispered, as recognition flooded in followed by waves of pain and fear, a rush of emotions that threatened to sweep her away as they spouted out of wherever they had been buried.

And the Clarius opened her eyes.

They were deep, rich, brown, and they looked around first in confusion, then zeroed in to focus on Pearl. "My knight," she said, her voice sweet and melodious. "So this is the form you take now." Her eyes fluttered back to Pearl's companions, finally settling on Elazul. "How things turn out after all. Were you trying to take my place?"

Pearl gulped. "If I could have cried… if only… My core did not have the sparkle, the clarity…" A jolt of pain hit her, a memory of Elazul injured in Mekiv, his pain so strong that it pierced her as well through their bond; and she helpless to do anything about it. She shook her head in frustration, trying to clear the memory away. "How do you know?"

"I have dreams," Florina said, her voice distant. "Dreams, that tell me things I need to know." Chills went through Pearl at the thought of her own dreams, dreams that seemed desperately to want to tell her something but couldn't quite get through. "I learned of Elazul in those dreams, and I feared, I worried. For him, for you, for the two of you together. But you found each other, and together, you have come to me now."

Florina sat up, color only slowly ebbing back to her. Pearl tried to send her some of her own strength, letting Florina draw a little off her, knight to guardian. It was a feeling that she had not felt in a long time; she relished the sensation, the connection, the sweet mix of pleasure and pain, until suddenly, the link snapped shut. Pearl stumbled slightly in shock.

"Don't try to lessen my pain, Pearl," Florina told her. "I won't take your core. I never would allow that, no matter that your heart wanted to give it." She paused and smiled slightly. "Some things about you have not changed." The link she had forged to the Clarius – _reversed_, in a way – and Pearl felt Mana flowing _into_ her. That was the way it worked; guardians drew strength from a knight, and knights pulled Mana through a guardian.

Pearl's gaze shifted around the room, a silly, euphoric smile crossing her face. Elazul – _her knight_ – was trying to hide surprise and tension, and failing rather miserably. Ariesa held back slightly, watchfully waiting. They seemed – very close, yet very far away.

"The Clarius. The pillar of life that supports us all." Elazul's voice was sharpened by an acrid, suspicious edge. "What are you doing to Pearl?"

Florina turned to Elazul, straightening slightly with all the presence of the Clarius, but her voice was quietly gentle. "I am going to help return her to her original form. There is something I want to ask her."

"But… I'm not ready…" Pearl objected. She could almost _see_ it before her, the things she had been reaching so hard to find, but now, so close, she found herself afraid.

"You can't! It will hurt her!" Elazul objected. "Look at her, she's terrified already!"

"She is scared of the truth," Florina answered calmly. "But do not fear. I cannot hurt her. I can only give, only heal." She smiled at Elazul. "You are truly a knight, to worry so for your guardian, this is not something you can protect her from. You know that no one should interfere in the affairs of knight and guardian - and she was once mine. She may be, still. We shall see. Are you ready, Pearl?"

Pearl thought of all the times Elazul had shown courage for _her_, even when she _knew_ he was afraid; and she steeled herself, determined not to let him down. "I am," she replied simply.

"Then be healed." Florina leaned in to let one sparkling tear fall forward. It splashed on her core, sheer sensitivity making her wince, but as her shock at the intensity of the feeling wore off, she felt a warmth permeating through her body. Her mind felt sharper, her limbs felt stronger. Her eyes dimmed…

------------------------------------

Blackpearl opened her eyes. They were all there. Elazul, Florina, Ariesa.

She looked down at her core, the silvery-gray shining back at her. _And, thought _Pearl_, it's all right._

Florina – _her guardian_ – only looked at her calmly, as Pearl stretched slightly, uncomfortably. "Lady Blackpearl," the Clarius began, "there is something I must ask you."

"I want to ask you something, too," cut in Elazul.

"Elazul, you should have more patience in the presence of the Clarius," she scolded him in a deep, melodic voice. _Her_ voice. "Though I always did love how you were always ready to jump forward to defend me, anytime I needed you."

Elazul's jaw dropped slightly at that. "_Pearl_?" he asked, stunned.

She took a careful, hesitant step towards him. "You can't tell?" she questioned, almost amused. "You should be able to feel it in your core."

Elazul took a deep breath, and nodded. He approached her warily, as if she was some untamed animal; but he _did_ it, until he stood facing her. They looked at each other, eyes on a level. It was a strange feeling.

Ariesa reclined in the background, taking it all in with a watchful gaze, in that quiet way she had. That was her strength, Blackpearl knew, the counterpart to Elazul's rash passion. It had once made her dangerously easy to ignore, but now… she had come far since Pearl had first met her.

"Elazul," Florina said, "perhaps we both have the same questions here." Blackpearl turned to Elazul, the oldest Jumi to the youngest, and saw a young man trying to find the courage to face something that he was very afraid of.

He opened his mouth, and slowly forced the words out. "I always wondered…" he began. "When I found… Pearl… you… out in the desert, you had a black core. You were a young Jumi girl, lying helpless out in the middle of nowhere, and I scooped you up, touched your injured core to make sure you were still alive…"

"I remember," said Blackpearl softly.

Elazul looked at her gratefully, and he continued. "Then... as I held you in my arms, the black swirled out to leave a white core behind. But then, in Leires, in Mekiv, in the desert, in here… you change from dark to light. If you are Blackpearl… then who is Pearl? _Who are you_?"

Blackpearl hung her head. How could she really tell him the truth, a decision that she had made unconsciously, of desperation and of despair… but now made perfect sense? A young Jumi she had met in the desert, burning with hope, trying to save the same things she was close to giving up on… but needing something to give him that extra push, that extra reason to keep going. That was a guardian.

_A knight needs a guardian, and a guardian a knight, two together for Mana to truly thrive, _she thought, sneaking a glance at Ariesa.

"Blackpearl?" Florina pushed gently.

Lady Blackpearl turned her attention to the young Jumi man once again. "You only think dark and light are so different, Elazul, because you just see the opposites, not the balance," she began. "Mana _is_ that balance. Synthesis… creation… light breaking the darkness, _something_ filling where once there was nothing. The memories of yesterday turn into the imagination of tomorrow." She swallowed, a lump in her throat, but as always, no tears would come. "But memories decay, like a fruit that rots, andwe seek today. After a millennium of disruption, and destruction, now… all we see, all we understand, is opposition. Once I understood these things so well; but I had almost forgotten them until you came along." She paused, letting it all sink in. "You do not need me to tell you these things. Of all the Jumi, your core is the one closest to the truth."

"My core?" Elazul asked, startled.

Blackpearl touched her hand to her own core lightly. "This was Moon Stone, once," she told him, "when the elemental was called Luna, not Aura, and she represented what lies _outside_, what _doesn't_ exist." She could almost hear Leires' voice inside her head reciting the words; her long-gone niece would have been pleased to hear it. "Yours is of the Tree Stone, perhaps the only Jumi core of such." Elazul's eyes widened slightly, and Ariesa shifted, herself startled. "Of life, of togetherness, of emergence, of something from nothing, of _existence_. Only part of the whole of Mana, yet of the eight elements, somehow most like what Mana truly is. A sky of dust, a million pieces coalescing to form the world."

Elazul frowned, trying to put it all together. She had known the first time she ever laid eyes on him; he was the one the sword was waiting for. A young, clueless man brimming with dedication and hope. Not unlike the woman who stood a few steps away, quietly leaning on her spear.

"You see," Blackpearl finished, "We are opposites, you and I, in a hundred ways. But we are part of the same. Jumi, Mana, and the Goddess herself."

She leaned on her hammer, unintentionally mirroring Ariesa, as simple fatigue suddenly overwhelmed her. Her vision blurred briefly, and Elazul instinctively grabbed her to support her.

"What is happening?" he demanded. The sound seemed distant; her ears seemed plugged. "Is she alright? Can you change her back?"

"She will be," Florina replied, "but she is adjusting. It is too much to take in at once."

Pearl suppressed a note of irritation at being discussed in the third person, but she knew Florina was right. It _was_ too much to take in at once, and she felt parts slipping away from her as they had a hundred times before. She heard Elazul's yell, and the clang of a heavy metal hammerhead hitting the floor, before a wave of black dizziness overtook her completely.

------------------------------------

_The dream was sharp this time, because Blackpearl knew the ending._

"_You came," Alexandra sneered. "A pearl in the desert... but a pearl is only another pebble, a pebble that pretends it is a jewel. You are alone." She grabbed a handful of sand and clenched her fist, squeezing the grains of sand through her fingers for emphasis as a vicious smile crossed her face._

_Blackpearl remained calm. There was an unpleasant suspicion harbored, one she had been trying to nullify or validate ever since she had felt the pull of the core in the desert, one conflicted and disrupted. "Alexandra," she told her. "We are both Jumi, yes?"_

"_Yes. Jumi knights, we two," Alexandra said, laughing with a hint of madness. "Only, I am a knight without a guardian, a guardian and dearest friend, who _you_ took away from me." She looked at Blackpearl with open hate. "Hurts, doesn't it, having the tables turned on you?"_

"_So this is your answer?" Blackpearl ventured, now absolutely certain her hunch was correct. "Taking Florina away and leaving your people to die. Your city, your home, destroyed by the Empire, the Jumi splintered like dust!"_

"_And I will be there to collect the cores that fall." Blackpearl felt sick to her stomach as she realized Alexandra was not only Florina's kidnapper, but the dreaded jewel hunter as well. "What if I had left her? Every year the Empire growing closer, the Jumi more prepared to fight, and she the only one left to cry, tear away her own life to heal the rest. Better that Jumi to die away, rather than clinging to life and taking down the Jumi with them. Really, we were only prolonging the inevitable."_

_Blackpearl heard the weakness in her voice as she protested. "It is the duty of the guardians who sit on the throne of Clarius to support the race with their own lives. She would have persevered, if you had only let her do her duty."_

_Alexandra jutted out her chin stubbornly, childishly. "I don't think so. I have a better idea. A thousand Jumi lives… that should be enough to heal the Clarius, shouldn't it? If even one damn If even one damn Jumi could cry to heal her… but you are all so useless. You have all lost your clarity, your sparkle."_

_Blackpearl clenched her hands on her hammer more tightly, a sign of nervousness that did not go unnoticed. "Yes, you, 'Lady' Blackpearl, most of all, trying to tell us what the Jumi _are_, when you forgot yourself a long time ago. It's _your_ fault the Jumi are being destroyed." Alexandra paused, and laughed, a chilling, maniacal sound. "You know, for once, I think I agree with Diana. The Jumi are an abomination, clinging to life and taking it at the expense of others. Well, I guess we'll have to save Florina my way, and kill two birds with one stone. Or use two knives to kill one stone," she said, whipping out her twin daggers to let the blades flash in the desert sun._

_Alexandra was truly, absolutely _insane_, Blackpearl realized, trying to focus on the strange sensations coming from the other woman's convoluted core. She realized with a sinking feeling that Alexandra's dark core had gained some bizarre ability to shield itself from others of her kind; and Blackpearl kept losing her grip on it, Alexandra's core fluttering in and out of Blackpearl's senses._

_Well, if Alexandra was mad, then reasoning with her was futile. She felt a faint pleading hope of desperation in her own voice; she really did not want to be forced to kill another Jumi, not when so many were being lost already. "It's not too late, we just need to buy a little time for the Jumi, to find the Stones, the Sword…" Blackpearl realized she was starting to babble._

"_And the Goddess will return and save us all?" Sandra asked. "Spare me, I've heard it all before. Well, in the unlikely event that a Goddess _does_ decide to show up, I suppose she can take it up with me. I have a new lord now."_

"_Please…" Blackpearl was resorting to begging. "Alex…"_

"_That was my human name! Don't insult me that way! Alex was a pathetic, timid being who died long ago!" Alexandra stood then, all traces of mockery gone from her face, and Blackpearl realized the woman was deathly serious now. "You just don't get it, do you, you stone puppet?" Blackpearl flinched at the insult. "You always amazed me… you who lived for a thousand years. I heard from Florina... that your core is black, and gives off no light, a shell for your own self." Blackpearl reluctantly remembered her guardian, the tiny, frail girl she was sworn to protect, laughingly fingering her core and teasing her for the swirls of silver._

_She hadn't realized she had backed up against the rocks of the oasis, against the stone bowl that held the precious pool of water that was life out here in the desert, effectively cornering herself. It was a measure of how much Alexandra's insults had hit her, how much they had hurt, how much of what she had said Blackpearl worried was in a way, the truth._

_Alexandra stepped closer towards the woman who was once ally, now adversary, her voice a quiet hiss. "The knight of the Clarius is just a rock! Not just you, all the Jumi who have lost their sparkle! We have lost the ability to cry and care for others! _We_ are the ones who should die, not Florina!"_

_Blackpearl suddenly, quietly, found herself growing coldly angry. "Were you there, in the wars, in the hunting, trying to survive? What do you know about caring for others?" she cried. "Look at who you yourself are!"_

_Alexandra only smirked. "Well, you see, I know exactly what I am. I'm not any better than the rest of you," she replied. "I'll probably die too, in the end. But not today. You're the protector of the Jumi, and I cannot let you live!"_

_Blackpearl barely dodged Alexandra's first strike, following barely as she finished speaking. The woman was _fast_, she realized, quicker than any human, Jumi or otherwise, had any right to be._

_But Blackpearl had advantages of her own._

_A thousand years of training, a hundred battles, had made her chosen weapon a part of her. She blocked slashes and jabs with head or shaft, and Alexandra began to show frustration as the only hits she made were bare grazes of clothing and skin. Nothing that worried a Jumi._

_Blackpearl smiled in satisfaction as her own weapon met its target, striking Sandra cleanly in the side and sending her tumbling to the ground, clutching ribs that must be broken. To her credit as a knight, she pulled herself up, agonizing pain crossing her face, and faced her enemy once again._

_She was slower, at least, and a couple swings missed, but the next struck her upper legs, and Alexandra fell to the ground, grimacing and unable to make her legs work. Blackpearl walked over to her disabled enemy dispassionately, and looked down on her, feeling a small sense of satisfaction at watching her squirm._

"_Do you still wish to fight me, Alexandra?" she said coolly. "Or do you know when you are beaten?"_

_She lifted her hammer casually, positioning it for a strike that would easily have shattered Alexandra's core. The other woman's eyes went wide with fear, and she stuttered awkwardly. "N-no… I have absolute respect for the knight to the Clarius… I would never wish to dishonor either knight or guardian…" She reached an arm towards Blackpearl, the gesture pleading._

_Lies, of course, but after all Alexandra had wrought, it was well-deserved music to Lady Blackpearl's ears._

_She was, indeed, gloating a bit, relishing the feeling… and that's when she realized, too late, that Sandra's bones were knitting together, _regenerating_, a twitch of her now-healed leg giving it away. And in the split second she had to react… she realized that arm reaching for her was holding a knife._

It was too late, _Lady Blackpearl knew, as hurt unlike anything she had experienced suddenly radiated through her body, lancing out from where the weapon had struck her core. Her body trembled, struggling to hang onto a life that only still existed because of that piece of stone._

_She writhed in the sand, gasping with the pain. She was vaguely aware of the grains of sand catching in her hair and sticking to the sweat of her face, in the way that one notices the most frivolous things when one cannot change what really matters._

_Alexandra loomed over her, making sure Blackpearl could see both her knives, poised and ready. "I could finish you, you know. But the way that crack looks…" She sheathed her weapons abruptly, and smirked in a very nasty way." I'm sure you'll be gone soon enough. In fact, I rather like watching you suffer like this. I only hope it lasts a long while. It is over, Blackpearl." And with no further words, she turned around, leaving the oldest Jumi too weak to even agree with her._

_Dusk settled, and quiet spread over the desert, and a lone Jumi fighting unconsciousness within it. Though _why_, she asked herself, did she even bother? She wondered if it was nothing more than the vague discomfort at leaving things unfinished. She certainly couldn't find any sheer willpower to survive._

_She was the guardian to the Clarius, she reminded herself when she could make thought connect; the only Jumi who could still cry tears of healing; but even for her, those tears were not there. She laughed at that irony, once, bitterly, but it was cut off with a stabbing pain through her lungs, following the line of the jagged fissure in her core that she did not need to see to know was there. She would have been better off had she been a guardian; had she a knight, she could have drawn on his strength for a bit, and maybe, just maybe, that would be long enough._

_With nothing left to do but reminisce, she pondered the choice she had made so long ago. She could have been Clarius herself, in an instant, had she wished it; no one would have counteracted her desire. _At least not openly_, she thought, thinking of Alexandra._

_But could she really have taken that path? Did she even _have_ the ability? She wondered, now, if she had taken the easy way out; all her strength was to destroy. And there were many things she _had_ destroyed. _Anise_, she thought, the name arising from memories buried for centuries._

_But it was the way she had always gone; and though she had many regrets over the years, it was only now that she was wondering if perhaps it had _all_ been a mistake._

_The six moons shone now, and it brought back the memory of how she had begun on this path. A thousand years before. _The moon_, Leires had once said, _uses its emptiness to reveal truth. In the night we all become different, yet the same._ It was a strange element – it changed, responded, had no desire of its own. But now… she found herself wanting to remember what she had once longed for. It did not seem she would have a chance to change her mind._

_If only she had a knight… Ridiculous. The Knight to the Clarius, needing a knight?_

_There must be another way._

_In desperation, she reached back to the old ways of healing, those her mother had taught to her, trying to find the Mana within her core and encountering a sharp pain pushing her away whenever she did so. But grimly, she tried over and over, like putting one's hand into a fire again and again._

_The moon was change, reversion, a return to the void and a reemergence into life… and that was what she was looking for. She changed the shape of the Mana she was seeking, and reached for… something else… the power of the moon to begin again._

_Above her, the six moons seemed to respond… and her core sang, pleasure and pain together, as she felt the sheer ecstasy of pure Mana wash over her._

------------------------------------

_Strong arms enveloped her, and Pearl opened her eyes to look into a face - the face of a young man, with piercing blue eyes, now filled with concern over thinly veiled fear. Not for _her_, so much as fear of the world, she thought; in the way sometimes sees in the young, fear intermingled with a hope that had not yet aged and died._

"_You are a Jumi, are you not?" he asked. She _was_, and she nodded weakly. That much, she knew, by the way her core softly thrummed, its slow beat trying to pull down the near-screeching anxious throb she felt from his. It reminded her of something… recent… maybe?_

_He touched her core lightly, and a sudden zing made her cry out. For a moment, she knew everything, knew who this man was, knew what he sought, what he needed, and, she thought, what he might be able to do. A moment, and then it was gone, and even the memory of the moment was fading fast, even as she tried to cling to it like a raft in the sea, to remember even that there was something worth remembering. Another moment, and that was gone as well._

"_Pull yourself together!" The tone was angry, but in a way that was protective, not pushy. "Your… your core…"_

_He helped her to sit up, and she tilted her head down to see a luminescent white stone just at the base of her vision. Her core seemed to greet her, but that was all it had to say. "I… I don't remember anything… Who am I?"_

"_You don't know? What do you remember?" Elazul asked._

_Pearl only let her mouth hang open, reaching to find… "Nothing," she told him._

_Elazul pondered her speculatively. "You are Pearl," he said after a moment. "A pearl, in the desert, unlike all the grains of sand."_

"_Pearl?" she said, blinking. "Who are you?"_

_He grinned then, and for a moment, that anxiety dimmed. "Elazul, knight of the half-Lucidia. You must be a guardian. Don't worry! I am a knight and I will protect you!"_

_Pearl nodded slightly, and raised her own hand, he helping her lift it weakly to his own core, to complete the circle and form the bond as had been done for ages. How did she know that? How could she tell that he hadn't done it before, that he didn't know exactly how to do it; and how did she know the right way to guide him through it? But guide him she did, as minutes passed, the link she had created awakening things in him that had barely been touched before, things that had been frozen inside._

_Finally, she knew it was done, and he gazed at her in confusion, and wonder. But his knew role seized him quickly enough, as he took her hand in his._

_She felt refreshed, strengthened, and she let him help her to her feet, letting him help her up just because it was the sort of thing for a guardian to let her knight do for her. She was Pearl, and Elazul was her knight, and that was all she needed to know._

------------------------------------

Elazul stumbled as he caught Blackpearl, cursing under his breath - belatedly remembering his manners in front of the Clarius - as he realized he hadn't factored in an extra ten inches or so of height, and the corresponding weight difference.

But she _was_ his guardian, he realized. He hadn't understood half of what she had been trying to tell him, but he knew the truth - it was Pearl behind those eyes. He wasn't quite sure what to make of it all; he had nearly forgotten the tall Jumi who had given him his sword, in his focus on Pearl, but he was trying to put it all together now.

And if _he_ was having such a hard time, he could just _imagine_ what she must be going through.

The thought brought him back to his responsibilities. It was hard to see anyone as competent as Blackpearl as vulnerable; but in a way, she was, and he brushed her hair back from the forehead of the tall woman in the comforting way he did with Pearl.

"What happened here?" he asked, attempting to keep his voice conversational.

Florina stood on Blackpearl's other side. _As fragile as Pearl, maybe even more so, _Elazul thought. _How did Blackpearl do it? _"I didn't repair her _form_, Elazul," the Clarius told him. "I healed the rift in her heart that keeps her from acknowledging both parts of herself. She should be able to switch between at will, now; but she must decide for herself how and why to do so. It is a lot to ask of her, and for that reason, it will take her some time to truly acclimate and remember everything. A protective mechanism."

Florina knelt down, and Elazul stepped back to give her a little room. Soft white light enveloped Blackpearl, leaving the girl he had protected for so long in her place.

"What do you remember?" Florina asked her gently as she sat up.

Pearl looked around the room dazed, for a moment, until her eyes settled on Elazul, with an aged wisdom he had not seen in them before. "I _remember_…"

Elazul listened attentively as Pearl recited the parts Elazul had missed, details that he – or for that matter, _she_ – had known until now. Florina only looked more and more grave as Pearl told her story, the expression unbecoming on someone already so wan. "I see..."

The Clarius pondered for a long minute, and silence hung heavily in the strange room, no one wanting to interrupt her chain of thought. "I have decided," she finally intoned, in a solemn voice that was at odds with the high pitch. "Please, Blackpearl, stop Alexandra, the one who betrayed the race." There was a shiver of pain through the words.

That did not surprise Elazul, but what did, was what Pearl had to say. "It is too late to stop her. Our only choice is to defeat her. She is no longer a part of Mana," his guardian said, resolutely.

"But she _is_," Florina insisted. "You mustn't hurt anyone. I will heal her troubled heart." Pearl suddenly looked indecisive… looked like herself again. "Blackpearl… please, you were my knight, listen to me now." To Elazul's surprise, the small blond girl nodded gravely, with the grace of a princess.

"When are we going?" Elazul interjected, only to find Florina's eyes on him.

"It is not so simple, Jumi Knight," Florina said with a bit of a sigh. "Elazul, I have something to ask of you as well. Please do not go with Pearl – you mustn't. No matter what happens, you must not interfere."

"What are you saying? I am a knight!" Elazul burst out, forgetting manners once again. "You, of all people, after all that's happened, should know a knight can't be asked to leave his guardian! Don't tell me what to do! I am Pearl's knight! She is my guardian!" he shouted, wondering if that was still true. "I _will_ protect her, as either Pearl or Blackpearl! Underestimate me, will you? What is it with everyone?"

He felt a light tough on his left arm, and he turned to see Ariesa. She opened her mouth to speak for the first time since they arrived here; and that gave every word importance. "Elazul…" she began, eyes dropping to the carpet awkwardly. "She's right, you know. What we want to do is not always what we should, and what we think is the right thing is sometimes wrong. And sometimes, we just have to admit that we aren't enough. I've…" She looked up to him, and her eyes looked weary, pained; he wished desperately there was something he could do to bring back her sparkle again. "I've learned this the hard way."

Florina sat on the carpet with a sigh of effort that was wearing on her. "We exist on a sword's edge. The Jumi will surely die out if Blackpearl loses this battle, and I will die along with them. But… worse will happen if you die with her. You are _different_, Elazul… you are the youngest Jumi, and you were not a part of us when we were still together. You don't think by the old rules, rules even I wish we could do without. You have never made the sacrifices the Jumi made to survive. In a very real way… you are not part of our past, not one of us. But I am still your Clarius, and if you listen to nothing else I say, Elazul, listen to me now… _you have another purpose_. Even if the Jumi are wiped out, you must survive."

Elazul felt his stomach dropping, and the room spun. He vaguely felt Ariesa grab his waist to steady him, and almost laughed at the thought, wondering if he was going to be the second person laid out on the carpet today, and if Florina just did this to everyone.

No such luck. Slowly, the motion slowed, and he found himself standing shakily on his own two feet. But at least he was standing.

"She speaks the truth. You cannot escape your destiny." It was Blackpearl's voice, and suddenly she faced him, her look intent; and idly he wondered when she had changed from Pearl yet again. "History… future… a new age… a new beginning… You have a future, Elazul. Maybe I don't." Her head turned slowly, to pointedly gaze at Ariesa, who for her part barely raised an eyebrow.

"Don't say that," he told her nervously, but with one hand motion, she brushed his concerns off. _Like a true knight_, he thought with the slightest feeling of admiration.

"But can you deny it?" Lady Blackpearl told him. "One can only hope, only imagine. I leave that my memories to you… all that were mine, all that were Pearl's." Suddenly, her form seemed to… collapse… on itself, and suddenly Pearl was there again, blinking in confusion.

Elazul felt an immense sense of relief at seeing his familiar small blond guardian. _Florina was right, _he realized,_ she could change back and forth._ "Are you alright?" he asked, as he had, instinctively, a thousand times before.

Pearl nodded, then paused, and the wisdom he had seen before surged back into her eyes. "I just remembered, Elazul. you gaze me my name. I think now… I was searching for the right name for so long…" Her eyes glazed, then cleared once again. "Don't worry, Blackpearl and I are one and the same. You are my knight, Elazul. That will always be true," she told him, all their feelings, all their history, rolled together into those few simple words.

------------------------------------

Ariesa was overwhelmed by the whole scenario, and holding it in, barely, watching the two friends she knew so well changing – in more ways than one – before her very eyes. Oddly, Pearl seemed to be the one taking it in stride… and Elazul was the one left with absolutely nothing to say.

She was debating going to him, throwing her arms around him whether he liked it or not, but instead, she let the Clarius approach him. _A goddess herself, in a way,_ she thought as she examined Florina.

She reached up gently, and her touch on Elazul's core seemed to soothe him. "Do not be afraid, Elazul. It is time." She lifted her other hand to her own core, and turned her head down sorrowfully. "It is said the true Mana Stone is in the sanctuary."

"We've already run across the Mana Stones," Elazul asked, perplexed.

"It is a Jumi legend," Florina told him. "If we are all pieces of Mana, living memories in rock - " she tapped her own core for emphasis – "then the true Mana Stone is the Goddess herself."

Elazul clenched his jaw for a moment. "So… where is this Sanctuary? Is that where I am supposed to go?"

"Right now, I do not know," Florina said, stepping away from Elazul. "But I can think of one place where you might begin." She returned to the jewelry box, and from the folds of the silk, plucked out a bejeweled staff. The eyes of Pearl and Elazul widened as the Clarius balanced it in front of her, and even Ariesa could feel the Mana being pulled towards the crystals that adorned it. "This staff… it will lead you home."

Pearl and Elazul reached for it almost as one, but Florina did not let go. "No… I will give this to _her_." She turned, and for the first time, Ariesa found herself looking directly into the eyes of the Clarius of the Jumi. Florina's eyes ha the wisdom of centuries in them, and boundless kindness, and Ariesa suddenly felt small and insignificant all over again.

"Ariesa," Florina spoke gently, "it is for you to lead."

"Why me?" she squeaked slightly.

Florina looked at her with an almost bemused expression. "So you won't go?"

"That's not what I meant… I mean… oh, I don't know what I'm saying!" Ariesa replied, suddenly completely flustered.

"Well, if you will accept it… then the staff is yours. Take care… the city of jewels has changed much. Once inside the city, you will not be able to get out." Ariesa did not understand, but Pearl, at least, seemed to catch her meaning, and nodded.

Finally, she turned to Ariesa once again. "Ariesa, take care of Elazul..." she said softly. The sprite only nodded. "I will see you when it is time, then," Florina said. She curled back into the jeweled box, and Pearl solemnly closed the lid, regret and worry on her face.

_I never told her my name_, Ariesa realized suddenly.

With Florina gone, Elazul reverted right back to his stubborn self. "Pearl, I don't want you to go. I won't let you go even if I have to shut you right in with Florina," he said vehemently, gesturing with one hand.

Pearl looked absolutely _shocked_ for a moment, then stuck out her tongue at him. Ariesa suppressed an urge to laugh. Something about Pearl was changing, for sure.

Elazul recoiled slightly. "Well, then… Perhaps we both should go," he suggested hesitantly.

They had heard Pearl's voice out of Blackpearl's mouth earlier; and now it was the other way around. "No, Elazul. You heard Florina. I have to go," she announced, bringing herself up to her full height, such as it was.

Elazul simply threw up his hands. "Ariesa, help us out here?"

Ariesa waffled. "I… I don't know. You heard Florina," she echoed lamely.

Elazul stepped closer to her, his nearness suddenly making her very uncomfortable. In a way she liked.

"Ariesa," he began softly. "You were always nearby."

"You told me to go," she said suddenly, stubbornly, knowing now was not the time.

"You know why," he said a bit harshly, now frowning. "But now… well… We can trust you. Take one of us with you. I won't hate you, either way," Elazul finished glumly.

_No, he wouldn't_, she knew. But neither would he like her for this. She drew a deep breath, and rich brown eyes met clear blue.

"No, Elazul," she replied. "Pearl is right. Florina is right. This is from the past, and it belongs to her."

Elazul looked miffed for a second, but for her sake, he hid it well. And she was proud of him for it. For a moment, she was tempted to run up and kiss him, but Pearl was there, and she couldn't quite bring herself to do it in front of his guardian quite yet.

But maybe she didn't need to. It took only a couple of steps to close the distance between them; and she laid her full palm against his core as she had seen Pearl do so many times before.

His sharp intake of breath told her that was more than enough.

His left hand stroked the side of her face. A shiver racked his body, and she let her hand drop reluctantly. His eyes held hers for a moment, until he broke the gaze to fumble at his waist.

"I know you said you'd never touch a sword again," he told her, "but perhaps this could persuade you to make an exception." He grabbed her hand.

The spear felt like part of her being now, but nevertheless Ariesa felt her breath catch as the obsidian sword was laid across her palm. Elazul guarded the sword nearly as much as that arm of his.

"Elazul," she wavered, "I can't take this." Out of the corner of her eye, she was suddenly conscious of Pearl, watching, peaceful and silent, expression unreadable.

"You're not," he replied. "I'm _giving_ it to you."

She grabbed the hilt experimentally. The feel of this particular weapon was new, but the general sensation was comfortable. Maybe she couldn't accept a sword... but she could accept a little part of Elazul.

Then she remembered. "Elazul," she asked. "You said all great weapons have a name. Does this have one?"

"The Sword of Fate," he whispered to her. "It's led me many places. Let it guide you as well."

"Ariesa," Pearl's voice was heard, and Ariesa understood the sadness it held. Pearl didn't want to leave Elazul either; but the choice wasn't really theirs to make.

Elazul knew as well, but that didn't mean he liked it. "Go, then," he said, suddenly brusque in the way he used to cover up his hurt. "Go to the bejeweled city. The world Blackpearl tried to protect." He turned away, irritated. "I guess I'll just stay here and keep an eye on Florina."

Ariesa wanted to say a million things, but somehow, she couldn't, as she swallowed the lump in her throat. She looked at Pearl; the girl looked no less happy, and hiding it worse. "Let's go, then," she said, in a tone that smothered her own feelings as well.

They were all scared to say the word "goodbye". Elazul's expression was unreadable, and Ariesa and Pearl turned as one to exit into the sun beyond.

------------------------------------

Florina had descended into the rest that had become her salvation. She had no way of knowing how much time had passed when she found her endless slumber disrupted once again.

Her first thought was that Elazul was checking up on her, but a different face came into view. A face that might have been frightening to any other Jumi, but for her, it was absolute comfort.

_How could it be otherwise, from her knight?_

Sandra leaned in and wrapped her arms around the smaller woman, and Florina found comfort in that embrace. "What brings you here?" she asked.

"It is time," Sandra told her with determination. "I am ready to take you back to the city."

Florina found a million questions crossing her mind. Blackpearl's gift of strength had given her a brief respite from pain; but she was not well, not by any means, and she found herself too weak to protest or argue. "Very well, then. I trust you, as I always have."

Sandra lifted her easily out of Pandora's box, and a stray thought occurred to her. "Elazul," she said. "He promised to check on me."

"I'm counting on it," Sandra said, but Florina barely registered the reply, as she found herself drifting off yet again.

------------------------------------

They had been traveling for days, and it had been only a couple of days before that they had crossed the border into the Empire. The outskirts, to be sure, but still, it made Ariesa terribly nervous. She only relaxed some as the city they sought came into view, a vague sparkle against the night sky, on top of the sense of Mana that rolled off it in waves.

The sun had set, however, and Pearl warned that the paths down to the city were treacherous indeed. Even as she said it, she gripped the staff of Florina, as if wishing it could take them directly there.

"The city was not meant to be easily found," she explained. "The staff is the only way… well, except for the Empire…" She stopped abruptly, and Ariesa did not press.

There was nothing to be done but make camp for the night, even as both women found themselves unable to sleep.

"Pearl?" Ariesa spoke at last.

"Yes?" came the reply.

"Are you worried?"

Pearl sighed, a sound which could mean a hundred different things. "I… I don't know," she said. "I feel like maybe I don't know enough to really be afraid."

"There's something I've wanted to ask you," Ariesa told her. "You're obviously remembering… some things…" She was scared to say more and embarrass Pearl, but she saw the Jumi's shadow sit straight up, now fully at attention. "It seems like… there's something in my past, something others can recognize, but for the life of me, I can't figure it out." She took a deep breath. "Do you know what it is I'm supposed to know?"

A long pause from Pearl. "Ariesa…" she began in a reluctant tone. "I wish I could… I know what you want to hear is probably _here_, somewhere in me, but I don't really have control over it. I know… well, only, kind of bits and pieces, and I don't really know how it's going to come up. I'm sorry," she concluded.

"It's okay," Ariesa told her. "It was worth a shot." With that, they both descended into fitful sleep.

They awoke to the sun shining brightly on the city in the distance, and the sun had not yet hit its highest point when they found themselves crossing the threshold into an ancient world.

"The bejeweled city..." Pearl's expression had drifted again, this time seemingly not inside her head, but somewhere in the memories of the past, the memories of the city itself. It made her seem more far away than she had ever been. "In the old language, it was called Etansel..."

Ariesa looked down the glowing corridor of jewels, glittering in the sun and undisturbed by the still wind, the quiet earth holding its secrets inside. She tried to reach for them as they stopped at the threshold, but despite her recent successes in reaching Mana, this time she touched nothing.

But she didn't need Mana to know the city was empty, and creepy, in the way that long-abandoned places always were. She couldn't shake the feeling she was descending into the past. She cast a glance at Pearl, seeing her discomfort reflected on the other woman's face, and a realization sprang to mind.

"The past is already with us, isn't it?" she whispered.

Pearl's gaze swept over the tableau before them. "Yes... here, more than ever… too much I remember..." she left the sentence hanging as they stepped into the city.

------------------------------------

Elazul had resumed his old room in the city of Geo. With the jewelry shop abandoned, it seemed safe enough.

After a long respite, Elazul's core was bothering him again – a little more every day since Ariesa and Pearl had left. He chalked it up to plain stress and worry for the two, and did his best to ignore it. He briefly considered asking Florina to fix it, but it had seemed pretty clear to him she was in no shape to be crying over anything.

Ariesa and Pearl, Pearl and Ariesa… he found himself considering both with equal energy. Today, however, it was Pearl, though, was the one who dominated his thoughts on this day. He looked back at the way they had been over the years… she always seeming so fragile, and he so angry whenever she would make him worry, but now… he felt like things were different, and would never be the same again.

It made him feel bad for all the times he had yelled at her.

There really wasn't much to do. A few drinks at the cafe or the fruit parlor, visits to Nunuzac at the academy… Philosophically interesting, maybe, but he wasn't really _doing_ anything, and that wasn't his style. It was enough to make him want to hit something, but he didn't even have a sword for that at the moment.

He found himself returning again and again to that strange jewelry shop, a place that no one else could enter. It was there he pondered the past and the future of the Jumi, in the tainted place that had once sold their cores. _Those had been the darkest times, for sure, _he thought; _at least, until now._

"But there is hope. Today is when they'll arrive at the city," Elazul said to the empty air of the lifeless shop.

"I know," a voice replied.

Elazul spun, to see... Sandra. She stood facing him in the empty shop, every bit of the same arrogance she had at their last meeting.

"I thought you were gone," he said warily.

She only grinned. "No such luck. I had some unfinished business to return to." She gestured to the walls around her. "Like the shop? I set it up to let the cores come to me. The perfect cover. A jeweler, who would think a Jumi would pose as that?" She smirked. "You can't hide from me. Not with a core like that."

_The jeweler, _Elazul realized with a sinking feeling. He knew Sandra's ability to hide who she was; and she had used that to trick him._ She's known I was here the whole time._

"You won't be leaving here again," Elazul threatened. "I'll make you pay for all of those you hurt."

Sandra cocked her head and gave him an almost flirtatious smile. "Why Elazul, do you really hate me that much?" she asked, batting her eyelashes in a manner so exaggerated as to be mocking. "We're really much alike, you and I. We are both protectors. We'll do anything to protect our guardians."

"Don't even try to compare me to you," he growled. "There is no way what you are doing is the right thing."

"But it is, my fellow knight. The right thing? Isn't it clear to you? Didn't Florina tell you the right thing is not always what you expect? Remember what I told you, as well. Sometimes we have to hurt others to protect out precious ones." And she whipped out two slender knives, with a cruel grin on her face.

Elazul reached instinctively for his sword, only to realize where it was at the moment. And in that split second of confusion, Sandra struck.

Elazul winced slightly as she pounced, and together they smashed through one of the glass jewelry cases. A thousand tiny cuts appeared on his skin, but he was Jumi, and he could feel them beginning to heal almost as soon as they appeared. That was the least of his problems.

He hadn't gotten this far as a knight without learning a few things, and he slipped into a watchful, defensive position, ingesting in every aspect of the scene. Sandra paced around him slowly, almost teasingly, every once in a while jabbing a dagger in his direction to make him flinch.

"Didn't you tell me you would make me regret Rubens' death?" Sandra laughed. "Try now, Jumi Knight. Try."

Out of nowhere, she struck at him viciously, trying to catch him off-guard; but for once in his life, he had his emotions under perfect control as he dove for her, sending them both tumbling against the floor into the sea of sharp and shattered glass. His stone arm caught her wrists, holding them against the ground, and her hands, still holding her knives, wiggled uselessly. He pulled his left arm back, and solidly punched her in the face.

Sandra _screamed_, and her body whiplashed, tearing her from his grasp. Lightning-quick, she sprang to her feet and leapt away from him, and he rolled over to pull himself to his feet.

One hand flew to her face, and her expression was contorted into pure, mad, rage. "You would have been just another core," she rasped out, "but then, you had to go and save _her_, when she should have died." She gestured with one hand towards the jagged crack in Elazul's ore, and as if on cue, it began to throb painfully. "I wished maybe, just maybe, I could have forced some tears out of that bitch. I must admit, though, her transformation took me by surprise. I didn't think she had it in her," Sandra finished, nearly conversationally.

"That's my guardian you're talking about!" Elazul cried, as anger took over once again.

He had the edge in simple strength, but gender was no barrier to the techniques taught by the ancient Jumi knights. Sandra had been there to learn those secrets… and Elazul had not. For every blow his fists and legs landed, she got three.

Locked in hand-to-hand combat, she used every trick to her advantage, catching every vulnerable spot. An elbow to the head; a knee to the abdomen. Jumi or not, Elazul still felt the pain of ordinary injury, and he bent forward, doubled up by his cramping, crying muscles.

Sandra did not give him a moment's rest. With a sharp kick, she slammed him against the floor, he wincing in pain as his left arm _cracked_ and bent at an unnatural angle, no longer responding. She practically fell on him, hands on his chest, fingers creeping towards his core as she looked down on him, her eyes narrowing to cruel slits.

"Does it hurt, Jumi Knight?" she taunted him. "Did your core hurt when I injured it? Does it cause you pain, every day? I could have killed you, you know, but I wanted to see you suffer, for saving _that_ woman."

The right arm, though, continued to have a will of its own, and it snaked behind him to grab his assailant in the neck. He squeezed, and felt soft skin give way to the fragile windpipe underneath. He heard her gurgling breaths, and almost smiled.

The ways in which Jumi could die were few, and choking might or might not be one of them; but he was definitely hurting her. Her hands lifted, trying to pull that stone fist from her neck.

Perhaps she realized his hand could not be budged; perhaps she realized there was only one chance left. He realized it too late when he felt the knife stab at his collarbone.

His hand flopped backwards, and Sandra calmly rose again as if nothing had happened. "Beautiful," she breathed. "Even with the crack, it has more sparkle, more Mana, than any of the others I've found. Well, you've certainly done your part to help Florina."

Elazul raised his head weakly, his chest suddenly feeling violently tight and constricted, his body struggled to hang onto a life that was not longer there. He forced his eyes to focus, and was immediately sorry he did, because there was Sandra grinning evilly, and OH MY GODDESS THAT WAS HIS CORE IN HER HAND...

He could only stare at the lapis gem, it seeming to beat in time with the blood pumping inside his head. A million thoughts, a million memories, flitted through his mind, the entirety of his life flashing by in those last few precious seconds, but only two refused to slip away. Pearl… and Ariesa. The blood coursed harder, banging against the walls of his skull, pounding harder and harder as if it was ready to explode.

It did explode, and Elazul knew no more.


	45. Secrets: Visions

**45. Secrets: Visions**

_Granz was the perhaps ugliest town he had ever been to_, thought Elazul.

He had been all over the world – the grandiose mansions of the city of Vizel, source of the Empire's wealth; the comfortable hominess of Wendel; the relaxed seaside cottages of Luon, at the base of the Lorant mountains.

But Granz was something else. The buildings were tall, angular, forbidding structures of stone, shielding the early afternoon sun to leave the street in semi-darkness. The only "color" was varying shades of gray, lending a depressing monotony to the town.

"You're only seeing the big picture, Elazul," Pearl told him when he voiced his feelings to her. "Look a little closer. Look at the detail carved into the stone." For emphasis, she ran two fingers around the fluted column he was leaning against.

Slightly chastened, he glanced around, and letting his mood subside somewhat, he took a more appraising look. Carvings of men, women, animals, shapes and patterns in the stone, as well as writings in a language long lost. He followed Pearl's eyes, and slowly began to see what she saw.

His guardian surprised him more than he cared to admit. He had only been her knight for a bare handful of years… but then again, he hadn't been alive for so terribly long himself. In more ways than one, Pearl felt like his whole life… purpose, clarity, and a hundred other things that mattered.

She remembered almost nothing more than the first day he met her, but she seemed… content… with the situation, content to let Elazul lead her wherever he wanted, while he pretended like he had any sort of destination. He suspected she saw right through that, but she never protested.

Then there were times when Elazul wondered if that was really _her_, times when she showed these flashes of wisdom, of sight, of sensitivity that evidenced something else gurgling underneath. He wondered if she would always be that way, or if eventually something would try to bubble up, and what it would be when it did.

_She's truly as lost as I feel_, he thought contemplatively. _We make a good pair, she and I._

But he had never been able to become as content as she with being lost. And that was why they were here.

They had wandered the Empire for most of the time they had been together. It was safe for Jumi now, as safe as any place in this world was, now that Deathbringer was gone. The Emperor had destroyed the Jumi city, that was common knowledge around the world, along with the fact that the Jumi had been exterminated; neither Elazul nor Pearl much cared to correct them in that regard. And the hunter who travelled the world now… well, it seemed to Elazul, he could pretty much find them wherever they went, Empire or not.

But the Empire was the place to find some answers.

The Jumi city was in the southwest corner of the Empire. _In a valley of gemstones_, Pearl had said, in a random moment of clarity that disappeared as soon as she spoke the words. But some careful inquiries had suggested that it was hard to get to in the first place, and the power of the city itself would keep you out if you ever reached it, the pain, pride, and hate the Jumi had suffered having soaked into the rocks themselves.

Pearl only shrugged when he asked her about it. "I don't know, Elazul, I really don't," she told him, looking so guilty for not knowing that Elazul never pestered her on the topic again.

Whether one could get to the city or not, the people of the empire had a million stories about the Jumi. Most of them could be safely discarded as nonsense – like the story that the Jumi had no hearts, which someone told to Elazul even while he felt his own heart thumping, one hand tightly clutching Pearl's in his own, with the same fear of discovery that he felt anytime anyone said the word "Jumi". But slowly, story by story, he began to piece together the things Sappho never had a chance to tell him about who the Jumi were – or rather had been – and by extension, who _he_ was. And maybe Pearl as well.

"And that's why we're in Granz," he whispered.

Pearl turned at the sound of his voice. Somehow, she was always looking towards _him_, not the other way around. She had been pacing up and down the steps languorously, head swiveling at the buildings around while she patiently waited for him. He could not disappoint her.

"Let's go," he told her, turning down an alleyway as if, once again, he had any idea of where they were going. One hand reached for his sword as if it had gone somewhere in the last five minutes, as he slowed his pace slightly to let her join him by his side.

------------------------------------

Night had long since fallen, and Pearl was tired, and hungry. It had been hours they had been traveling the streets of Granz, looking for… something. _Hopefully_ _dinner_, she thought, her stomach growling.

She wasn't stupid. She knew, realistically, that Elazul didn't exactly know where he was going. But he had that brazen, if somewhat faked, confidence… and that was a million times more than she had in herself. He was her knight, and she would put every faith in him.

So she took a breath, and followed Elazul still.

Apparently she didn't do such a great job hiding her exhaustion, because it was barely a minute later when Elazul, facing away from her, stopped up short. "You're tired," he said, turning to her, right hand touching his own core, she feeling the brush on their bond that made it absolutely pointless to lie.

He stood still and pondered for a moment. "We'll find something to eat," he announced, "and then we'll decide where to go next." Pearl barely nodded her head, grateful for his taking control. He had figured out quickly that she would never admit weakness, never try to hold him back, and he had simply gotten in the habit of announcing what they were going to do. She was glad. It was one more worry removed from her.

The denizens of the night were out now, the only open establishments pubs and houses of ill repute. The former would probably be the only place to get something to eat at this time of night, but Elazul steered her determinedly past the first few, unsavory characters flocking out in front. Pearl started to wonder if all of Granz was indeed a cesspool.

Finally, they saw an entryway not dark and noisy, but calmly lit by yellow light. The murmuring sound of voices quietly conversing, and a rhythmic sound of music in the background, pulled them closer, even Elazul now showing his exertion. Pearl might have drawn on his own strength right now, half-asleep as she was, but she had the feeling he had nothing left to give.

"Hello?" Elazul said, rapping on the open door. No answer. One hand instinctively reaching for Pearl, guarding her behind him, as he stepped through, and she peeked around his shoulder into the room beyond.

Inside, was nothing more than a group of young men and women, as young as Pearl and Elazul were themselves - if one corrected for the altered lifespans of the Jumi, that was. A roomful of eyes only looked at them in confusion at first, then a young woman spoke. "Welcome, strangers. Join us."

Elazul paused, but Pearl squeezed his hand slightly, and after a second, he let her step forward in response. It was their way of saying to each other that neither of their cores felt threat. And however on edge Elazul might feel, he knew how exquisitely sensitive Pearl was to the mood of a place.

The group shuffled slightly to make room for the newcomers, and Pearl sank gratefully into the pillows that covered the floor in lieu of chairs. Elazul sat cross-legged next to her.

"Your girlfriend?" asked the young woman who had greeted them.

"Yes," Elazul replied, one arm circling around her protectively. Pearl did not object. They were hardly going to admit to being Jumi here.

Besides, it was doubtful that non-Jumi could truly understand the bond between guardian and knight. She didn't know for sure, but she doubted any bond of lovers could compare. She slumped against Elazul's side…

------------------------------------

"Is she alright?" asked their hostess, a young woman with pale bluish-green hair curling out of the tie she held it back with. Her aqua eyes flickered over Pearl with concern.

"We've been walking around all day," Elazul offered by way of explanation. "We only reached Granz today…"

The young woman nodded in understanding. "She's probably exhausted and hungry, a little thing like that," she replied, and someone else he barely noticed responded to the unspoken request. Within minutes, Pearl had been roused to happily chomp on some odd-but-pleasant smelling meat and vegetables, color returning to her cheeks as she ate quietly. Elazul found the same offerings shoved in his hands, and once Pearl regained some of her strength, he was relieved enough to give attention to his own dinner, suddenly finding himself ravenous.

"I am grateful for the hospitality," he told the woman. "I can pay." He reached for a wad of lucre, but she placed one gentle hand on his arm. He flinched, as he always did when anyone but Pearl touched that right arm.

"No," she told him. "We offered it. If you like, you can buy more food tomorrow, but I'm not going to let you give me money."

It was the most generosity he had seen in a while, and he nodded, resuming devouring his dinner. Licking his lips free of the last crumbs, he turned to the hostess, who had seated herself calmly next to him with an aura of someone who preferred taking care of others to herself. The dozen-odd denizens of the room were all engrossed in conversation themselves, a couple getting up to dance in a slow, swaying motion to the persistent melody of drum and marimba. "You're northern," he told the girl.

She looked at him thoughtfully. "I should have known you would have guessed," she told him. "You have the northern coloring yourself. And your name is?"

Elazul introduced himself and Pearl, not particularly worrying that their identities meant anything here. "Greetings," she told them gently. "Welcome to Granz. My name is Terra."

"Where are you from, then?" Elazul asked, grasping at the most logical topic of polite conversation.

"Narshe," she replied. "A small mining village, outside of Lorimar. One of the places where Lorimar mines the iron it sells to the Empire to survive." She turned slightly pink, and Elazul saw the first trace of a negative emotion across Terra's face. "Well, at least, that's where my ancestors are from. I've spent my whole life inside the Empire."

"You don't mind?"

"This is my home, now," she replied. "It's not as… oppressive… as it was when Irzoile controlled it, though the rumors say he has influence from beyond the grave. I live, and hope for a better future. One day the Goddess will return."

"Terra!" came the shout, and she turned.

Another man brought an odd-looking instrument, a glass vase with four tubes snaking out of it. Elazul had never seen anything like it, and he said as much.

"It's a hookah," Terra told him. She produced a small handful of grass and seeds from her pocket. "The finest Judd Hemp. The hookah's for smoking it."

"What does that do?" puzzled Elazul. In one ear, he heard Pearl chattering comfortably, reassured she was safe.

"Most of the time…" she began, "most of the time… it makes you forget. At least for a little while, sometimes we want to forget." She paused. "But sometimes, if you're in the right place… it will help you, to remember, to imagine. To find some answers. If that's what you really want." She turned her head away shyly.

"Can anyone possibly answer all my questions?" Elazul said quietly. She did not seem to hear.

Someone was lifting a candle to the top, and Terra took hold of one of the tubes. She inhaled deeply, holding her breath for a long moment, before exhaling a cloud of smoke. She leaned back against Elazul, a silly grin on her face, and he pulled her closer unthinking.

_That wasn't so bad_, he thought. Forgetting… there were a million things he wanted to forget, and a billion he wanted to remember. Terra lay softly comfortable against his chest, and he stroked her hair absent-mindedly. He head nodded slightly, then bumped against the hardness of his core. Her eyes fluttered open, startled.

"It's fine," he told her, and stroked her hair gently. She nodded sleepily, and resumed her position, her body against his.

It was offered to Pearl first. She seemed apprehensive, but the mood of the group settled into her, and she waited only for Elazul's slight nod of permission, the reassurance that she would be safe. She reached for it, and inhaled as if she could breath in everything she was missing.

Next, was Elazul's turn. His first impulse was to push the thing away, but Terra's warm presence calmed him. There was something about the environment here… it felt more peaceful than he had felt in a long time. Terra guided it to his lips, and he breathed in deeply…

He coughed violently at first, and someone handed him a glass of water. He leaned back as the coughs faded, and suddenly his whole body felt limp.

His mind was foggy, but at the same time, it was _racing_, a hundred thoughts beginning at once, then flickering away like dust in the wind. He couldn't hang onto one long enough to find the meaning at the end, but… he knew there was a meaning nevertheless.

"Trees. Swords. Goddesses," he mumbled, and Terra turned her head to look at him.

"You know about the Tree?" she asked.

"The Tree…" Elazul forgot the rest of the sentence.

"We are here for the tree," spoke another voice, this one deeper and stronger, but unmistakably feminine. A tall, yellow-haired woman, dressed in clothing suitable for fighting but all in white, stood a short ways away; she was the one who had spoken. "We oppose the empire, and we will make the tree come back."

"Celes," Terra said, as if she was trying to scold, but not really succeeding. "Is now really the time?"

"How are you going to do that?" Elazul mumbled, more confused that ever.

"Simple," Celes replied. "All we need is a guardian to awaken the Goddess, and become the tree."

_Guardian_? Elazul thought, suddenly worried, sitting up abruptly to check for the room for Pearl. Terra wrapped her arms around him to steady herself, clinging in a way that was not unpleasant. Pearl was right where she had been, happily talking with new friends and puffing away. _Good, she's fine_. "Become the tree?" he asked, turning his head slowly in the other direction.

"Yes," Celes replied. "The legend of Mana says a woman of the Mana Tribe will become the tree."

_Cultists_, Elazul thought with a start. They had been preaching about this for… well, a while, anyway. Hundreds of years, maybe. Not truth, just another desperate hope in a world without Mana, one of many legends… but he was Jumi, and he knew what truth was. He touched his own core to remind himself.

"The Empire is evil," Celes recited grandly, now worked up by the topic. "They wish to deny the truth of Mana, of the Tree."

"Mana," Elazul muttered, trying to remember what he had been thinking a moment before, as Celes continued her speech.

He didn't remember when she had strode over to him, but suddenly she was leaning over him, one hand uncomfortably close to his chest. "That's a core, isn't it?" she asked. Suddenly clarity returned to Elazul.

"Don't… touch… it…" he hissed.

Terra sat bolt upright, and pulled Celes's hand away. "Elazul," she told him, "don't worry. We are not core hunters here."

"How is it you even know about cores, or hunters?" he asked, a bit accusingly.

"Because word gets around our circles," Terra told him matter-of-factly. "We look for what we can of Mana, and Jumi are the living memories of Mana, holding it in their very souls, the souls encased in their cores." She touched one fingertip to his core for emphasis, and even through the fabric of his shirt, Elazul flinched.

" 'The guardians become the tree, and the knights protect the guardians,' " said Celes, apparently quoting something. _This has nothing to do with _real_ knights and guardians_, Elazul thought to himself. _Becoming_ the tree? This was nonsense.

Suddenly, Pearl shrieked, and Elazul's attention was on her in an instant. Before he even leapt to his feet, three or four Granzians had propped her up. Terra looked at him in concern, but he had already forgotten all about her.

"It's okay, she just fainted for a moment," one told her, but Elazul wasn't listening. He took Pearl gently into his own arms.

"Everyone… I'm so sorry," she whispered, her voice next rising into a wail. "I wasn't there. I couldn't have helped you." Her eyes snapped wide open, and flitted fearfully. "The moon has no desire; it is where it all begins. The tower shows the truth."

Elazul pulled her to him, feeling worry and panic creep in, and though she threw her arms around his neck, she was still off in her own world. "I would have been Clarius myself, if I could…but I couldn't. _I couldn't cry_!" she stammered, though at the moment it seemed very much as if she would like to. "The tree. It must be found; the barriers to it must be broken. The Goddess will return, and with her, the Jumi will be together once again."

That got Elazul's attention. "How?" he asked. "Pearl, how do we do that?"

She did not seem to register him. "The Sword is the key. It's the sword or me," she whispered, and suddenly her head nodded off, half asleep."

"Let her be," a man's voice said. "Elazul, just set her down." One hand reached out to support Pearl's shoulders, and Elazul found himself letting the other man ease his guardian down to soft pillows.

"Locke - " protested Celes, but the man – a roguish type, a bit of chin scruff marring an otherwise prettily handsome face – only waved her away. "I've got it, Celes. Don't worry about it." There was a hint of affection in his voice, and Elazul didn't fail to notice the look that passed between the two.

Pearl had somehow fallen asleep, even lightly snoring, and Elazul found the echo from her core relieving. Terra placed one arm on his back, trying to comfort him.

"It was…" Terra started. "It was like she was seeing the truth."

"The truth hurt her," Elazul said, a bit harsher than he had intended. Terra pulled back with a slightly hurt expression, and he immediately regretted his tone.

She got up and walked away, somewhere into one of the other rooms. Celes had gone somewhere, but Locke watched Terra go with a different expression than the one he had directed towards Celes, but no less intense for that.

"What does a man do?" he sighed, turning a fake-exasperated glance towards Elazul. "One woman you love, another you are sworn to protect. How do you choose between the two?"

"I have no idea," Elazul said absentmindedly, his hand touching Pearl's core. There was peace in it once again.

Locke looked at him with commiseration. "She's fine" he said confidently. "She just needs to get to bed. Come on, I'll help you out." Together, they lifted her – though she was probably light enough for only one man to carry – and brought he to one of the many small, comfortable rooms hidden in the back.

Terra appeared in the doorway as Elazul was gently wrapping blankets around Pearl. She watched without expression, standing, waiting, finally motioning him to return with her.

The night drifted on, with drinks, music, talking, and laughter. With the calm thrum of Pearl's core only a short ways away reassuring him that she was safe, Elazul found himself letting go in a way he had not in some time. But eventually, as the night wore on, everyone drifted away and to bed, finally leaving Elazul and Terra alone with a few last stragglers. Locke had long since gone, and Elazul was fairly certain he knew who the other man was with.

"Where do you want to sleep?" asked Terra.

"I don't know," Elazul said honestly. "Just crash out on the floor next to Pearl or something."

"That won't do," replied Terra. She reached for him, and he offered his left hand to her. Exhaustion was setting in, and he couldn't find it in himself to protest as she led him to what was quite obviously _her_ bedroom, he practically falling into her bed, not protesting as she lay down as well and squiggled against him.

The candle was burning down, leaving the room dimly lit. For a long time, the two just lay there, their breaths echoing each other. He shut his eyes and let his hands travel down her back, relishing the feeling of her warmth against him.

It seemed absolutely natural to him when she tilted her head to let her lips meet his, and for a moment he let himself sink into that sensation as well, before suddenly breaking away. Terra propped herself up on one elbow, looking hurt and confused.

He touched one finger to her lips. "I… I'm sorry," he squeezed out. "I... I don't think I can. Not right now," he finished hastily.

"I can see that," she said softly, hanging her head.

"Can we just be close?" he asked her, feeling a little guilty.

She smiled then, a small, secretive smile. "I suppose that would be alright." She settled down once again, as Elazul found himself drifting off.

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Elazul and Pearl found themselves staying there for days, maybe weeks. They weren't really counting. It wasn't as if they necessarily needed to – they had already found out most of what they were going to squeeze out of Granz – but rather that it was a comfortable spot they had found themselves in, one they were both reluctant to part with.

Pearl found herself easily making new friends, and after the years spent in Elazul's exclusive company, it was exciting. Not that she disliked Elazul, not at all, but it was tough to be just the two alone in the world.

Today, it was Celes keeping her company. Perhaps it was simple coincidence of physical resemblance that drew them together – blond hair, blue eyes, a taste for white clothing. But the similarity between the women ended there. Celes was a hardened warrior, someone who had fought for the Empire – and perhaps someone rather high up in those ranks, though Celes didn't seem to want to talk about it. The blade she carried whenever she went outside into the streets of Granz was not just for show.

"You're not bothered by Terra?" asked Celes, out of the blue.

"No," Pearl said, "why should I be?"

"Really?" Celes asked pointedly. "I mean, it's competition for his attention, right? I mean, that's even if you didn't really think of him as… a man…"

"Of course he's a man," Pearl replied, thoroughly perplexed.

Celes sighed. "You know… what happens between men and women, right? Like… me and Locke?" she finished quickly.

"Yes," Pearl replied, suddenly embarrassed. She knew quite well what Celes was referring to. And some nights, she figured half the place knew it as well. "But Elazul?"

"You are a woman. It seemed to be the natural thing," Celes said softly. "I'm… sorry if I offended you, or embarrassed you. I just thought… maybe that was the way it went."

Pearl had stopped listening after the first sentence, and turned to stare in the large mirror hanging on the wall. _A woman. Of course she was, that was a stupid thing to point out, _was her first impression, but as she stared, she sort of understood what Celes was getting at.

She had never thought she was anything more than what she was… _a Jumi guardian… _but now, she took a long, objective look at herself. She found herself staring into a pale, childlike face, a face that would stay young no matter how many years those eyes saw. Her eyes traveled down her body, noticing as if for the first time curves that clearly belonged to an adult, but that she never really thought about.

Nearly unconsciously, she lifted one hand to her core. _This is the only part of myself I know_, she said silently.

The mirror reflected Celes quietly watching her in the background. "Elazul," she asked herself, too softly for the other woman to hear. "Is that really the way it's supposed to happen?" She knew she would do a lot for him, she knew what she owed him… but love? She tried to make it fit in her head, and it didn't. But then she tried to picture another man, _any_ man… and that didn't seem to want to work either.

She had seen Celes with Locke, the two at times seeming as if they were in their own little world, a circle no one else could enter. _Like knights and guardians,_ she thought with a sigh. But did being part of one mean being part of the other? Or if one was part of one, could one be that way with another?

"And is that something that is ever meant for me? Who am I?" she asked the mirror quietly.

------------------------------------

Elazul spent his time in Granz learning, regrouping, gaining direction.

Not to mention, in between, just relaxing. And most of that time, he spent with Terra.

He found her company… pleasant… in a way that he hadn't felt in a while. Pearl was nice company, but this… it was different.

_How_ it was different, was something he couldn't exactly explain. Was it when they laughed about the same things, at the same time? Was it when he looked at her, to find her looking back at him? Was it that he found himself thinking of things he could do for her, not to keep her safe, like with Pearl, but just _because_?

Truthfully, he didn't know, but it didn't seem to really matter.

One thing he knew was different… the way she felt. Every time he touched her, or she him, he felt a little shiver of… something. In his core, but also in his body, in a simple physical way that a Jumi rarely seemed to experience.

He never touched her directly with his right arm, of course; and she didn't worry about it, adapting without asking the _why_ he didn't want to let her know. Nor did she much question why he only ever kissed her lightly – definitely past the border of simple friendship, but then again, not that far.

Days grew into weeks, and he thought he would be itching to go, but as time drew on, he found he wanted more and more to stay. But he had responsibilities – to himself, to the Jumi, to Pearl most of all.

He found his guardian late one evening, peacefully sitting late by the fire. She did not need to look up to know he was there. "I haven't seen much of you lately," she said.

"I'm sorry," Elazul said, feeling guilty.

"I'm not angry," she said, turning to him. _Of course she wasn't, _he knew, and that almost made it worse. He plopped down next to her and stared into the fire to avoid looking at her.

They sat together in silence, two who knew each other so well in some ways, and in others not at all.

"I think it's time to go," he told her.

"Oh?" was all she asked, as she placed her hand on his right arm, and he felt a shiver. It was all she _would_ say, he knew; but he felt like he owed her more.

"It would be too easy to stay here, Pearl," he told her, finally turning to her trusting eyes. "But really… is that what we want to do? To just stay here, to be, to sit and wait out the years, without ever learning the truth, without seeing what we need to see?"

Pearl hung her head, and abruptly, he realized that she had seen even less of that truth than he did. He had told her what had happened in her strange vision, but she couldn't make heads or tails of it, and seemed more bothered for having heard it. It mad him feel terrible for bumming her out.

But the point was the same. She agreed with him; she didn't need to say it to tell him. "Then it's agreed," he told her. "We should leave tomorrow. Let's not draw this out longer than we have to."

Pearl gave a slight nod of acknowledgement, and they sat for a long time together in silence.

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Elazul was trying to make it quick and clean, but no such luck.

"So soon you have to go?" Terra asked him. The sun was climbing in the sky, still a little short of noon; and the population of Granz filled the city streets, scurrying all around as they rambled in and out of those carved stone buildings.

Pearl was a few yards away, saying goodbye to the new friends she had made, they pleading with her to stay. Elazul felt his spirit unexpectedly lifted, seeing the way they she charmed them all so easily. "It's been some time," he told her, as gently as he could. "We have to move on."

Terra turned those aqua eyes away from him, and a sudden impulse led him to grab a lock of her pale green hair, today left loose. "The same coloring as mine," he noted idly; and it was. Lighter, yes, but unmistakable.

She did not look at him. "Where is Pearl's coloring from, then, I wonder?" she asked, looking now at his guardian.

"I have no idea," he admitted. The wind blew wisps of her hair around her face in a way he found very distracting.

"She's your guardian," Terra said. "You're Jumi." Elazul flinched; no one had brought that up since the first day they were there, and he had later found out most had been so intoxicated they had forgotten.

No such luck, apparently, with Terra. She tugged on her clothes awkwardly, as if to diffuse what she had said. Then again, he was not terribly surprised she had remembered, and he only nodded in response.

Terra still looked away, though Elazul found her arms snaking around his neck. "Guardians…" she said, the sentence drifting off. "Love, and need, all wrapped into one. How would mere romance ever compete with that bond?"

Her hands clenched behind his head, and even as he slipped his left arm around her waist to pull her close, Elazul knew she was right.

She finally turned back, and her eyes locked his in a way that wouldn't let him go. "You need it, you know," she told him. "You need to be part of a pair. I can see that about you. You will never be happy without it." And inside his had, Elazul knew it was true; he hadn't been, until the day he found Pearl.

"Do you love her?" she asked abruptly.

"How do you expect me to respond to that?" Elazul replied.

She ignored his answer. "What do you know of love?" she asked him softly. "Some, I think, but not everything. You haven't really seen what it's about." Her eyes flickered towards Pearl. "Knights and guardians are not lovers, not necessarily, but still… she leaves you the control. She would respond if you started it; she would need the push to develop whatever feelings may be there. You and her are family, already, in a way, but there needs to be something more…" She looked at him, cocking her head suggestively, and her eyes taking on a smoldering cast that he hadn't seen before. "Is it there with her?"

Elazul turned his mind away from the woman so neatly wrapped around him, and looked at Pearl, trying to see her in the way Terra was suggesting. Pearl was pretty, certainly; and he had thought about it in passing, in the way that men often notice the women around them. He couldn't really help that, but he never really stuck on it; there were always more important things he had to think about. But now, he _really_ focused on the idea, trying to wonder what it might be like to put his arms around her, pull her close, lean in to kiss her…

His response was immediate. It wasn't attraction, it wasn't repulsion; it was that queasy feeling of doing something that was completely, profoundly inappropriate. "No," he told Terra. "It will never happen."

"But she has your heart anyway," Terra said, a bit sadly. "There is more to things," she told him, looking into his eyes with intense seriousness. "Romance… desire… pleasure… tears… passion… What do you know of passion?"

"Little," he admitted.

She leaned in close to him. "I wish I could be the one to teach you," she whispered, barely audibly.

Elazul pulled her closer to him, meaning only a friendly embrace. But suddenly he found his face turning to hers, and their eyes meeting without words. Her aqua widened in surprise, then closed gently, and without knowing who did it, he felt their lips brush each other.

This time, she wouldn't let him go so easily. He had only exchanged playful kisses with pretty girls who noticed him, long ago, as a much younger man; but she led him through it, and he responded naturally enough. Time flowed for a long moment, something about Pearl and cores and hunters and swords poking his brain in the background… but for once in his life, he shoved those thoughts away, and forgot about them completely.

Finally, they broke apart, and he felt his core and heart both beating, awkwardly out of sync. "I can't," he told her. "I am Jumi. I can't let myself care for anyone who is not. You know what I mean," he finished awkwardly.

"The curse?" Terra's eyes narrowed slightly, but her voice was not angry. "Yes, I've heard. But you are only hiding behind it. It is Pearl, and her need for you, and you for her."

He wanted to brush it off, tell her otherwise, but she wouldn't let him, and stepped back. "No, don't be afraid. It is a great privilege to be able to see one's direction in this world… " she told him, "But one day, I hope… you will find something, or someone, ever greater than that."

He reached his right arm towards her, but she shrank away. "Goodbye," she told him, then turned and fled, and he only stood there, wanting to chase her, but unable to find the will.

Instead, he only watched her go, and when he could no longer see her, only then did he reluctantly return to where Pearl lingered. She stood there, patiently waiting as always, and as much as he knew which direction he was going, he thought with a heavy heart about what he had to sacrifice for it.

They began the slow trek back out of town, and as the gray, blocky buildings of Granz receded in the distance, the empty path opened ahead.

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**Trivia bit for interested parties: **Granz is based on San Francisco's Financial District. Sansome Street, to be exact.


	46. Legends: Tears

**46. Legends: Tears**

The Jumi city was a relic of the past, a being dry and dusty from being devoid of life completely for uncounted years, eliminated from a world that barely knew of its existence. Ariesa couldn't shake the sensation of dead voices whistling on the wind as she took her first steps inside.

"It was destroyed by the Empire…" Pearl shivered slightly. "It remembers how it was afraid. Florina was right. The city won't let us out."

It was hardly the comforting statement Ariesa might have hoped for. "How do you know?" Ariesa asked.

"Only Jumi are allowed in this city," Pearl replied, looking almost surprised at the words coming out of her mouth. "It senses you…"

Ariesa looked around at the rocks and jewels. "What senses me? There's nothing here." Mentally, she shushed the whispers echoing in her head.

Pearl had an expression of great sadness, and if she tears could fall from her eyes, they would have fallen then. "It's… it's the city itself." She gripped the bejeweled staff she had been carrying, as if the jeweled scepter was any sort of weapon. "I don't know how to explain it really well to someone who's not Jumi… but the city itself has life in it, Mana seeped into the rocks. It knows we're here, but it doesn't know who we are, or what we are here for. It's afraid, and it won't let you go until it knows why."

_Like the Underworld, _Ariesa thought pushing down the unpleasant memories as she forced herself to stillness. Barely a breeze interrupted her concentration as she reached out towards the Mana of the city, this time harder, but still… for her, there was no more than before.

She told Pearl as much, and her friend only nodded in neutral acceptance, as she always did. "It doesn't matter, Ariesa," she said gently. "It does not change what we came her to do."

"Which is?" Ariesa asked, a bit petulantly.

"To find the truth," Pearl breathed, her eyes glazing over as if she was fading into the past herself. She wandered along the wide, deteriorated terrace that overshadowed the valley below, and around her, jewels buried in stone seemed to come to life, glowing once more as one of their own glided past. It gave the city a sort of desolate beauty that couldn't help but touch her heart.

Before them appeared a large, ornately carved gate, flanked by jewels on pedestals, framing a stairway beyond; Ariesa glanced up to the second level of the city, the rocky overhang jutting out over them, and the many tiers above. Pearl stopped suddenly and caught her breath. "He gave us 'the steps to lead us upwards'; that's what they said about him," she said in wonder. "That's why they called these Sappho's gates."

"The Jumi whose core the twins and I found in Polpota?" Ariesa asked. "Did you know him?"

Pearl just hung her head, squeezing her face into intense concentration , and a quick flash of emotion and pain crossed her face for a moment. "There was… something," she finally said, opening her eyes but not lifting them from the ground. "It's gone now… I feel like it was important…"

Ariesa reached out a hand for her shoulder, but Pearl, uncharacteristically, shrugged her off. "Let's just keep going," she said, and began to climb the stairs.

They traversed the second level, Ariesa nonchalantly noticing the receding distance of the valley below. The quiet of the dead city was seeping so deeply in her bones that she didn't realize at first what she was hearing; but suddenly it grabbed her.

"Voices?" She turned to Pearl, startled, whipping her spear forward and slamming its butt on the ground. Not that she could be sure it would be any good against what they might find here.

Pearl only looked forward, her manner not dominated by worry but by deep, penetrating sadness. "There's no one here," she said mournfully. "It's an illusion of when everyone was alive..." The two women met each other's eyes, and slunk carefully behind some of the larger rocks to get a closer look.

They needn't have bothered… there was no one alive to hear them.

Ariesa saw the impossible... faces, some she knew, and others she didn't, but she knew well enough who they were. Jumi, all - Jumi who had been hunted, _murdered_ by Sandra, so now only there cores were left to reach for the city that had once been their home.

The figures were startlingly, frighteningly animated, and that by itself gave Ariesa chills, as she was drawn in by the illusion the city had composed for them. In the center, Diana stood at the head of a small gathering of Jumi; not the jaded, defeated woman she had found in Geo, but a beautiful, dignified lady, standing tall and proud with the presence of a queen. By her side stood Rubens, his aura of hopelessness gone, replaced by a fierce determination that reminded her of Elazul; and Ariesa wondered what had happened to make those two the shades of the people they had once been.

"How is Florina doing, Rubens?" Diana asked gravely, a look of worry faintly breaking over her proud expression.

"Not well, I'm afraid. She is more tired than ever, and her sparkle has faded; though for the sake of her position and the Jumi as a whole, she tries her best to hide it." Rubens crossed his arms in a gesture of frustration.

Diana paced a few steps, almost forcibly measured and graceful. "What can we do?" she finally said. "Was it a mistake to let Blackpearl go?"

"You made the best choice you could, and you put your faith in the right place," Rubens soothed. "Alexandra will take care of Florina well enough, I'm certain."

Diana only nodded, and an intense weariness seemed to creep over the leader of the Jumi. Rubens stepped forward, and she let him wrap an arm around her, an intimate gesture that Ariesa felt suddenly very uncomfortable watching… yet at the same time, she was touched by the bond they shared, a love that both of them needed to survive.

A piercing yell broke the silence. "Diana!" The woman wrenched free of Rubens' embrace, head twisting towards a faded figure, someone too long gone for the city to remember more than their voice. Rubens stiffened, her knight waiting at absolute attention. "Whatever is the matter?" she queried with a casualness that covered fear.

"Florina is not in her chamber!" the messenger breathed, and the drop in Ariesa's stomach reflected the expression that crossed the faces of the deceased Jumi. She turned to Pearl, and Pearl returned the gaze, twin looks of horror only magnifying the feeling. _To hear about the past was one thing, _thought Ariesa_, but to experience it once again…_

The spirits of the past faded as if they had shown all they wished to their visitors. "Everyone... I'm sorry... so sorry..." Pearl whispered, over and over, as if to erase the memory. "I should have been here to stop it..."

_Pearl? Stop it_? Ariesa questioned herself reflexively, before remembering _why_. She gently took the hand of the shorter woman, and Pearl gulped before nodding. "I'm fine, really," she protested. "We should go and find out if the city has any more to show us."

As much as Pearl tried to hide it, it was obvious to Ariesa that she was shaken, and eventually her worry crept up into her speech. "The city… it remembers me," she whispered. "More than I remember myself… Ariesa, what do I do?" she asked plaintively.

"I don't know," Ariesa said honestly, wishing she had a better answer. Now that their senses were honed, there seemed to be a hundred, maybe a thousand, other ancient Jumi voices whispering from the stones to the empty air, the incomprehensible words embracing them. Though the words flew away on the wind, the two women found the feelings sinking into their skin nevertheless.

They climbed too many stairways for Ariesa to keep count, but finally, found themselves before one larger and more grandiose than the rest. Dozens of pillars flocked its base, and as Pearl stepped within them, they seemed to spring to life; and Ariesa swore she could hear a faint chime as they greeted the Jumi woman.

Pearl only ignored the jewels, heading for the gate itself. She reached one hand up to touch the gate's carvings, touching it almost with a lover's caress. "Sappho…" she said plaintively, and all the energy seemed to drain out of her.

"No, Pearl, don't give up!" Ariesa cried, but before she had a chance to grab her companion, she realized Pearl was doing anything _but_. The jewels flared as one with light, and so did Pearl's body in a visual echo.

The light seemed to _snap_, to collapse into itself, and where Pearl had been standing, Ariesa was now confronted by the Lady Blackpearl.

She did not seem herself, the indomitable, intimidating woman Ariesa remembered. Instead, she leaned against the arch with an expression of extreme world-weariness. "We told them nothing…" she half-whispered, and raised her head upwards, looking at what, Ariesa did not know. She had not realized how tightly she had been gripping her spear, and forced her hand to relax and drop the weapon. Patiently, she waited.

It was several minutes before Blackpearl spoke again. "This gate…" she began. "This gate was named for him. He was supposed to be the key, the one who led us to survive… it worked for a while, I suppose, but now I see we were just covering up the things we could do nothing about."

_He was her lover_, Ariesa realized with a start.

Blackpearl continued her musings. "Was there ever an answer? I suppose not, unless we wanted to give up what we were… should we have been created at all? Was Sandra right about that?"

"No!" Ariesa shouted, surprised to find her voice at last. Blackpearl turned to her, at first barely comprehending, but her expression gradually sharpening. "How can you say such a thing?"

Blackpearl took a deep breath. "Child…" she began. Ariesa considered protesting the form of address, but a single glance shut her up. "You don't know even a tenth of what you should. I wish I had that luxury." She slumped against the gate once again. "Nine hundred sixty-nine years, an eternity of watching, of struggling, of trying to survive and save those who were my responsibility from the very start…"

Ariesa's _eyes_ nearly fell out at that. "You've been around for so long?" she yelped, momentarily forgetting that might be a rude thing to say. But Blackpearl did not seem to take it as such, and turned to gaze at her again… and for a moment, Ariesa saw the fear and wonder she always associated with Pearl.

"The past… is hard to remember," Blackpearl said reluctantly. "But there are a few things that scream as clear as day… I have the sense for some things, things that one learns to see as a creature of Mana. I have the knowledge of what I learned outside the city after no one else was allowed to leave." Ariesa shifted uncomfortably at the eyes that were on her now, thoroughly intimidated.

"Bits and pieces…" Blackpearl continued. "I had an aunt… so long ago, but I can still remember her face, if not her name, and I see her in you."

"What?!" Ariesa exclaimed. Blackpearl paid her no mind.

"No ordinary woman. An Amazon, they called her… She was a queen, a queen all other queens should strive to be. The proud kingdom that was once Rolante, now called Lorant in the area where it fell to dust and its ashes still remain."

"Lorant," Ariesa echoed, remembering the night so long ago she had slept in those very hills. The dream reached for her once again. "There was something there I was supposed to remember…"

Blackpearl looked at her gravely. "Perhaps it was the kingdom itself that spoke to you. Perhaps it was that queen, so long ago. She was strong, beautiful, intelligent, kind…" She looked at Ariesa, with an appraising eye that the younger woman shrank underneath. "And I will swear… you are her heir."

Ariesa suddenly felt all her muscles go weak. She stumbled slightly over to the opposite side of the arch, surprised to find herself clinging to it for support even more tightly than the other woman had, finding herself facing the Lady Blackpearl across the gaping opening.

"You know what that makes you," Blackpearl continued, gently. "A queen."

_A queen_… Her mind protested automatically. She was no queen, she was a young woman who had only ever lived in the backwaters of the world, stumbling along in life with no idea what she was doing half the time.

But Blackpearl seemed to read her mind, and her voice softened to something almost maternal. "None of us ever really know what we're doing, Ariesa," she told the perturbed girl. "We all only ever do what we can in this world, and sometimes we can't anticipate the consequences. No more can be expected from you. You are a queen, yes, but there is more to you as well… and Elazul…"

"And you?"Ariesa asked suddenly. "Who were you, before you were Jumi? Why the name 'Blackpearl'?"

"It's not a name," Blackpearl told her. "It's who I _am_." She grunted once, a curt, almost barking sound. "Well, I'm telling you that you are a queen, but do you know they called me a princess myself, once?" She curtsied once, with an amused smile. "It's not who we are, Ariesa, but what we do. No matter where we come from, we still earn our place, one way or another."

Ariesa knelt down on one knee, finger drawing circles in the dust. Circles overlapping, circles inside and outside of each other, while her head tried to put it all in some kind of order. "Your aunt, you said?" she began. "So am I related to you?"

Blackpearl pondered that for a long moment. "I suppose we are, at that," she replied. "But it's been forty generations or more, and it's very distant. You are probably more closely related to Elazul, I suspect."

Ariesa started, thoroughly shocked, and Blackpearl looked at her pointedly. "Didn't think of that, did you? It's been a long time. When you come right down to it we're probably _all_ related to each other somehow."

"Maybe so," Ariesa said cautiously. "But… it would be nice to think of you that way."

And then, of all things, the woman laughed, a rich, rolling sound that sounded completely out of character. Yet it was comforting, in a way; it made Ariesa realize there was more to Lady Blackpearl, that she could be Pearl as well – an odd synthesis, but one that was beginning to make sense to her. "If you wish to consider me as such… I would be honored, my Lady."

Ariesa nodded, suddenly feeling the equal of this woman for the first time. "Let's go," she said, and turned, knowing the Lady Blackpearl would follow.

------------------------------------

Blackpearl followed the younger woman, contemplating her silently. She was a queen, yes… but she still had quite a way to go.

Witness the present moment. She was charging ahead with no thought of what there might be, even though, to Blackpearl, the feeling hung so heavy in the air she felt as if she could reach out and touch it. She gripped her hammer in anticipation, watchfully monitoring the woman before her.

Even so, she had only a split second to warn her. "Look out!" she cried, and it was only a sprite's quickness that saved Ariesa as the beast burst out of the earth itself.

Ariesa cried out in surprise, but Blackpearl was ready. She knew well enough what Sandra had done… taken the Mana of Etansel itself, and warped it through those strange powers of hers to contort the ancient soul of the God-Beast that had once been encased in the Stone. Inside the city, the particular affinity of the Jumi for the earth element reached fruition; and Sandra exploited that to its fullest. This jewel beast was nothing like the weakened, half-alive summons she remembered from Mekiv and Leires, almost as if some other person's memories. This was a slavering, bony thing, beginning to show signs of life once again, desperately trying to find what it needed to complete its transformation.

Blackpearl contemplated it almost distantly. It was pathetic, in a way; the dignity of a once-powerful monster decayed to…this. _Not unlike the Jumi themselves_, she thought, a bare skeleton of what it once had been.

It cried out angrily, and Blackpearl motioned Ariesa forward, as she herself met the thing head-on. Her hammer smashed into one bony leg with a very satisfying crunch, and it stumbled forward on its remaining three appendages.

On the other side, she saw Ariesa flailing slightly, and cursed inside. The first time in the middle of a battle, she was struggling with her new weapon, and Blackpearl didn't have time to bother with it all.

"Distract it!" she cried, and a slightly wide-eyed Ariesa nodded. She stepped back and switched to wild strikes that were destined to be ineffective, but did the trick, as the thing blindly followed her flailing weapon.

Blackpearl almost smirked as the opening made itself apparent, and she prepared to smash the hammer down on the jewel beast's back…

…only to find herself tumbling forward to the ground. One hand grabbed her core instinctively, and the skin of her hand scraped against the pebbled earth underneath her. Blackpearl only grimaced at the pain as her skin tore to leave a smear of blood; it would heal quickly enough, and meant nothing as long as her core was safe.

She had bigger things to worry about. She rolled on her back, to see the jewel beast towering over her, the one leg that it had used to trip her still hanging at an awkward, distended angle. It had only the barest semblance of a single eye, but the light within that eye seemed to burn in anger, and Blackpearl braced herself for the strike she knew was coming.

"No!" she heard Ariesa's voice shriek, and before Blackpearl could call back, the young woman was there. She brandished her spear awkwardly, as if unsure what she wanted to do with it. The jewel beast almost seemed to _laugh_ at that, and Blackpearl saw it raise one foreleg casually, almost as if toying with Ariesa.

She knew what would happen next, and it was something she couldn't allow.

She did the only thing she could think of. She grabbed Ariesa's ankle and tugged, and as the girl crashed to the ground, rolled to cover her with her own body, a split second before the blow fell. Blackpearl knew it was coming, but she shrieked despite herself as the sharpened-stone leg drove into her side, instead of into Ariesa's heart.

Instinctively, her hand flew to her side, as she rolled onto her back and Ariesa pulled herself to hands and knees. Jumi could endure many serious injuries, as long as the core was safe, but this was stretching the limit. Ariesa cried out and reached her hand to Blackpearl's side, it coming away smeared in red blood. Blackpearl looked at the matching smear already drying on her hand, and laughed wildly and ironically, as Ariesa struggled to her feet to face the thing once again.

It was a glittering flash that drew all of their attention, including the monster – that, and a sudden, violent wind that broke the still air.

It was no wind. It was _wings_ flapping, from an elegantly beautiful dragon, scales shimmering in shades of gold and brown and red and white, something about her radiating femininity. Her powerful wings beat as she hovered above and beyond the ledge, her expression furious; and Blackpearl's core nearly squealed at what the dragon held in its claws.

It was a Mana Stone.

"This cannot be," the dragon wailed. "You must return to where you were confined." The beast shrieked in protest. "Lady Blackpearl!" the dragon cried. "Allow me to access Mana through your core!"

"Sure," Blackpearl agreed, lolling her head to one side, far too weak to argue. Ariesa knelt over her, concerned, and grabbed Blackpearl's hand.

Blackpearl was about to protest that she did not need it, but suddenly, she screamed, and her hand squeezed Ariesa's so tightly she thought the other woman's bones might break. But Ariesa did not let go, and only lay next to her on the ground, as together they watched the Stone in the dragon's hands flare, and suddenly… the jewel beast _contorted_, collapsed, its form squishing into slivers that seemed to be sucked into the Mana Stone itself. As suddenly as it had begun, it was gone.

"The Goddess will thank you for that," the dragon said with satisfaction. "The Beasts must be confined in their Stones with the energy of the Sword before the Goddess arrives to channel their power once again."

"Huh?" Ariesa asked. "What does that monster have to do with the Stones, the Sword, or the Goddess?"

The dragon sighed. "The point is, certain things need to be put back as they were, to be ready for the Goddess once again. Certain… forces… have been messing with that. As if the Goddess didn't have enough problems already," she finished tartly.

Blackpearl only moaned, wondering how pathetic she looked lying there in the dust. Ariesa helped her gently to a sitting position, and the dragon settled in front of them, the Mana Stone she held now throbbing with a dull glow. "Who are you?" Blackpearl asked. "Do you know Vadise?"

"Of course I do," the dragon replied in a low, bemused tone. "I am Cybele. She was the one who put me in charge of this." One claw tapped the Stone. "But then that other one… the… _Jumi_…" She almost seemed uncomfortable to say the rest.

"Sandra," Blackpearl practically spat. "She is near."

"That she is… and something more," Cybele said, looking upwards almost fearfully. "Something… something I cannot fight myself, or this beast would never have come so close, or evolved as far as it did."

"Then how can we do anything about it?" asked Ariesa worriedly.

"Because…" Cybele looked at them pointedly. "Um… I'm not really sure. But I think you two could figure it out?"

_Big help that was_, Blackpearl thought. "Won't you be coming with us?"

Cybele hesitated. "I wish I could," she finally said, "but something keeps me away from it… I promise, I will watch over you as well as I can." With that, she flapped away, seeming almost relieved to be gone.

"Help me up?" Blackpearl asked Ariesa, and the other woman tugged her to a standing position, she grimacing all the while. Ariesa did not fail to notice.

"You're hurt," she said, bending forward to check the injury.

"It's nothing," Blackpearl protested.

"It _is_," insisted Ariesa. "Can you… maybe… Elazul… like at Leires?" she rushed out.

"He's too far away," Blackpearl lied.

"You can't go on like this. Look, you can barely walk," Ariesa insisted.

"You forget," Blackpearl said, with a vaguely lecturing tone, "that I am a knight. I heal faster." Sure enough, even as she cringed, she could feel flesh knitting back together, so cleanly no scar would ever be seen. Fortunately, Ariesa took her at her word. "Now, let's talk about something else." She pointed definitively to Ariesa's spear.

Ariesa gripped it protectively, and Blackpearl wrapped her own hand around the other woman's fists.

"You see," Blackpearl told Ariesa, "the strength is in the length, the leverage…" She tapped her own hammer head for emphasis. "For a woman, this gives you a strength you might not have had with the sword, provided one has the agility." She looked Ariesa's figure up and down critically. "The elven roots help you in this, as they did me. No bulk to weigh you down."

Ariesa took a few practice swings, and Blackpearl forced a little patience out of herself, offering pointers and suggestions, part of her head all the while worrying about what might be happening upstairs. "Not like that!" she called harshly, for what seemed the hundredth time.

Finally Ariesa had enough, and dropped the weapon. "You're stalling," she accused.

"No, I'm not," Blackpearl said. _At least not entirely_, she admitted to herself. "But we don't have much time. Are you sure you are ready for what lies above?"

Ariesa jutted her lip out stubbornly. "Yes," she insisted.

"For the love of the Goddess, I hope you are right. It is time to go," Blackpearl said abruptly, touching hand to a side that was now nearly healed. Gritting her teeth at the last of her pain and worry, she stepped onto the staircase leading upwards, to face her destiny, and that of the Jumi she had begun.

------------------------------------

It was a long, winding set of stairs up which Blackpearl led Ariesa, the girl following her with blind trust. Perhaps a fitting metaphor, Blackpearl thought, wishing she could know so little herself. The stairs themselves were only a memory of a memory to Blackpearl, but she found the veils that hid those remembrances rapidly fading away, and with every step, the path became more and more familiar, the yesterdays feeling closer and closer to today.

She didn't need her core to sense the mood of her companion. The girl was a combination of confused, invigorated, angry, and just plain sulky. She was young, and emotional still, that one. That sort of turbulent inner state… It was a liability, in this sort of fight, but Blackpearl found herself jealous nevertheless, jealous that she was still able to harbor that sort of passion.

The stairs approached the top altogether too soon for Blackpearl's liking, and before her the chambers of the Clarius came into view, recognition not so much blossoming as exploding in her head. She stood there rooted to the spot, suddenly afraid to take the last few steps forward.

Suddenly, a voice seemed to break out of her own thoughts. "Our sparkle will go out!" she heard the cry, and as sure as she knew herself – maybe more so – she knew that was the voice of her guardian.

Ariesa snapped to attention, and Blackpearl knew the call was not her imagination. "Another voice from the past? Another memory?" Ariesa asked, confused.

"No," Blackpearl said sharply. "Someone alive." She gripped her hammer as she bounded up the last steps, hearing Ariesa's quick footfalls following behind.

She grabbed the handle of the door, and it stuck – a door that was never locked. Suddenly fearful, Blackpearl grabbed her weapon and bashed in the door to the Clarius, a door that had never been barred to her before. It shattered rather thoroughly, and she strode into the room, murderously determined.

She found her guardian crumpled on her throne, and before the Clarius, Alexandra stood there, the same gleeful expression she had seen when the woman abandoned her in the desert. "Ah, Lady Blackpearl," the jewel hunter greeted her. "I expected you, after all that mess that happened downstairs. I see we have both returned to our true forms. The need for the charade is done, is it not? The game you and I have been playing for a hundred years. Give or take."

"What are you doing?" Blackpearl demanded, slamming the butt of the hammer's handle on the floor for emphasis.

"Exactly what I am supposed to do. I am the knight to the Clarius, and I am protecting her," Sandra replied, madly wild-eyed.

_She really believes what she says, _Blackpearl realized even as she felt her own anger spilling over. "How can you say that? Look at her?" she roared, but the woman didn't even flinch.

Sandra turned to her onetime guardian with a dismissive gesture. "Oh," she replied breezily. "Florina didn't quite understand what was to happen next, and she began to be afraid. Seems she was a little bothered by the destruction of all the other useless cores. She'll wake up again soon enough, and whether she likes it or not, she will be saved."

Blackpearl felt color drain from her face. Alexandra, always subversive and challenging, seemed less afraid of her than ever. And it was not being faked. A splinter of terror sparked through her as she wondered, were the Jumi really about to be destroyed?

"Florina would rather die than have that happen," Blackpearl told her, forcing firmness into voice to cover the panic that threatened to take over.

"That's why I didn't ask her," Alexandra replied. "Nor do I really care what you think of it, either. You will be gone soon enough, my Lady. In a short while, your core will either be smashed, or disappeared. Doesn't really matter to me, frankly." The thought chilled Blackpearl to the bone, and she looked at the woman filled with fanaticism, who had abandoned everything she had been. "Why, Alexandra, why?" she asked, in a small, strangled voice.

"Because she recognizes the balance… and that's what my master needs," Alexandra said simply.

A form slipped out of the shadows, where it had blended in so thoroughly and neatly that Blackpearl had not even noticed it was there, but now the light revealed it fully. Though some of her memories were coming back only slowly, this one was as clear as the sun.

"I've seen you before," Blackpearl said carefully. "In Mekiv."

"Indeed, "rasped a grating, dirty voice. "But in that place… I was… restrained. In this dead city… I thrive."

"Who are you?" Blackpearl demanded. The mottled, decayed creature seemed to have… a sparkle... from the inside, and sudden horror took her. "No… it couldn't be…"

"Yes," Alexandra uttered gleefully. "It _can_. He is from the beyond… he has the power of a black hole, where everything disintegrates to become one inside." Blackpearl gasped in repulsion, suddenly unable to tear her eyes away from that unearthly glow.

"From the beyond," Blackpearl murmured. "The place from which the Wyrms were called. The place the demons come from." She looked at the creature pointedly. "You are a demon."

"Indeed," the monster rasped. "And I will take the Jumi with me. They will no longer be of this world; their sparkle, their Mana will return to the stars, to the universe. The place where I live now. They will bring the beauty of Mana to my realm, where it shall become my own."

He turned to Ariesa, who stood quietly back, and Blackpearl noted with satisfaction the quiet, mad rage, that crossed her niece's face. "I told you once, and now you see," he cackled, "what beauty may drive one to do."

Ariesa frowned darkly, but held her composure. Blackpearl felt her voice growing cold, cold as the universe in which the demon lived. _The universe in which the moon exists as well_, she reminded herself, her core pulsating wildly in her chest. "Alexandra," she half-spat, "I will take you to the Underworld. I will shut you in darkness so you can never hurt others again!"

"The Underworld?" Alexandra practically cackled. "You think the darkness frightens me? I've been there long enough," she said, hands reaching to a core that now throbbed blood-red.

"You're mad," said Ariesa quietly, her voice ever the more unsettling for it. "You couldn't handle your powers, and that's why he could take you for his own. You don't even know what you are talking about. Stars, universe, Mana splintered into dust?" She waved her spear dramatically. "This is called the Stargazer, and it's something real. Something that can be used to make a difference. There's more truth in this weapon that anything you could tell me."

Sandra hissed at that, and Blackpearl added fuel to the fire. "Dark only has a role when those understand it," she said scathingly. "And you, Alexandra, dropped into it without ever knowing what you should."

"Dark is the power!" Sandra cried, her voice disjointed as if wasn't choosing her own words. "It is the channel for chaos, for destruction!"

"That's what you think," Blackpearl replied, with feigned nonchalance. Her hand reached up to a core that now swirled with all eight of the elements, but the moon most of all. "The moon has a power to channel chaos all its own; no simple element, it is. The moon shines at night; it is the enemy of wrongdoers and dark forces. And it has found _you_."

"Enough," the demonic creature finally said. "I want her, Sandra. I do not want to wait any longer."

"Name yourself," Blackpearl ordered.

"Why… I am, simply, the Lord of Jewels," he said, eyes traveling lustfully down to Blackpearl's core, and she shuddered.

"Which one do you want, master?" asked Sandra cringingly, head swiveling from Florina to Blackpearl.

"Either one," it whined. "Florina, yes, she will balance the Jumi power I have opened, after you, my darling, have been my key. A buffer of sorts, to let me reach the things I desire. You see, of course, I could not approach this power on my own?" Oddly, the expression he directed towards Blackpearl seemed almost poignant, pleading, filled with a desperate need and desire; and Ariesa looked suddenly ill. "You see, I wish no harm to Florina," the thing that dared call itself something as sick as the Lord of Jewels spoke. "She will be my light, a beauty I can keep. Look at her," he murmured, "so pure, so tender… the clearest expression of Mana to be found among the Jumi, the Mana that sparkles… I crave her. She is a guardian of Mana, and Mana exists for us to desire."

"Why the cores?" Ariesa suddenly interrupted. "Why not stones, or swords, or any of those other things?"

"Because, beautiful thing - " Ariesa noticeably cringed at that – "the cores are worth more than anything else. How could it be otherwise, with the return of the Goddess so close? The sword cuts, it splits, but these _join_… They are the closest thing there is to the Goddess herself, they practically surging with Her energy. That power can balance chaos, and only by balancing chaos can the Goddess be challenged… The Archdemon had the Sword, but the Sword got smarter. And you," he said, gesturing to Blackpearl, "are worth more than all of them together." Blackpearl gasped, ashamed that she had allowed fear to show.

"He's right," Alexandra replied, and for a moment Blackpearl saw a dash of clarity, sanity, breaking through the barrier of madness that confined her. "The Goddess is close, you just need to reach for Her… Please, Blackpearl, if you can cry, do so now, and the Jumi will not need to die." Fear crossed her face, and she reached a hand hesitantly towards the oldest of the Jumi.

"Yes…" the demon crooned hypnotically. "The beauty of pain, of tears."

It was no use. No matter how close the Goddess might be, tears were just as far away as they had ever been. Blackpearl only bowed her head, and Alexandra's fear suddenly turned to sheer terror. "It's harder, I know, to be a guardian," Alexandra said softly, with an edge of barely suppressed panic in her voice, "but you have always done what Mana asked you to do. Don't let your destiny end here."

"I can't…" Lady Blackpearl hear her own voice coming out, strangled, and as easily as the expression on Alexandra's face had softened, now it contorted violently once again, as if that moment of gentle sorrow had never been.

"Then so be it. We'll do it my way." Sandra smiled then, a smile of utter, base cruelty. "A thousand cores… that's what we will give back to Florina. My master has already swallowed nine-hundred ninety eight, and the next is…" Casually, she pulled a stone of gold-flecked blue from her pocket.

Blackpearl thought she screamed then, but she found herself with mouth wide open and no sound coming out. It was Ariesa screaming for them both, the shrill sound filling the lifeless air around them. Blackpearl felt the blood draining, flushing through her body, until all sense of herself left her except for the pulsations of her core, the essence of her being, the gem itself crying out to the core of one who had been her knight.

But no response came back.

"How dare you!" she shrieked, as her legs struggled to hold herself up. "My knight! _Elazul_!"

"_Elazul_!" came the echoed cry… and Ariesa charged.

For only a split second did she have the element of surprise, before the Lord of Jewels suddenly swung… some sort of unnatural protrusion, a writhing thing of glistening blackness. Blackpearl barely had a chance to blink before the girl flew backwards, hitting the far wall with a painful-sounding thunk. A moment passed, and Blackpearl was relieved to see Ariesa wobbling to her feet once again, shaking her head to clear the last of the shock and dizziness.

"No more of that. Stand back, or I'll smash it," Sandra threatened, lifting the lapis core high above the stone floor to emphasize her seriousness.

"You wouldn't dare," Ariesa gasped.

"Try me. There's a replacement right there," she said, motioning to Blackpearl. Sandra tossed and caught the jewel a couple times, bouncing it on her palm for dramatic effect. "Lapis Lazuli. The Sky of Dust to become one with the universe. A wonderful sacrifice, don't you think?" Ariesa cried out, reaching a hand involuntarily, and Sandra smirked. "Oh, I see I've hit a nerve."

Blackpearl felt the rush of memories clawing their way to the surface from wherever they had been hiding, flooding into gaps of time and knowledge. And woven through them were memories of a self named Pearl, who had been protected by Elazul for all the time she could remember. "My knight!" she cried once again, anguished.

"Your knight, eh?" Alexandra never stopped smiling. "He was, true, and that's why I found it so gratifying to hurt him, to make him scream, but never able to cry." Blackpearl flinched, and it only gave Sandra encouragement. "The bitter taste of losing everything…" Sandra mused, holding the core aloft. "You know, _Pearl_," she pronounced the name with derision, "you were my only failed hunt. But it is worth it, to have you be the final core, to see the entirety of the Jumi shattered before you. Does if hurt, _Lady_ Blackpearl, to see the demise of everything you worked so hard to save?" She paused then, her expression almost leering. "Give it up, Blackpearl. Leave all your sorrows behind. Give in, give me your core, and all your suffering will be over." Blackpearl shook her head against the rising tide of memories, threatening to swallow her whole. "You know, I am rather glad to make your core the last, so you can see the Jumi die, and suffer knowing your knight is gone as well."

She nonchalantly tossed the core to the Lord of Jewels. The demon opened his gaping maw to catch it, gulping it greedily, and Ariesa cried out with a squeal of intense loss and pain. "Oh, stop it, girl," Sandra said dismissively. "You would think you were in love with him."

Sandra suddenly shrieked, as Ariesa's spear drove into her thigh. As Ariesa yanked it out, Sandra looked first at her in shock, then down at the torn and wrecked skin of her leg, blood dripping onto the floor of the sacred Clarius's chambers.

The Lord of Jewels _roared_ then, and his figure transformed, elongating into a sinuous, serpentine creature, only with features in all the wrong places… mouth in the center, eyes at both head and tail. Echoes of jeweled orbs, the cores he had swallowed, seemed to trail him like some horrid afterimage. Blackpearl shoved her repulsion down, and sprang into action.

Her hammer swung, meeting its target squarely, only to sink into gooey flesh. It seemed to have no bones, it was just a gelatinous glob of goo, regenerating easily as soon as Blackpearl pulled her weapon back. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Ariesa striking forth with the skill Blackpearl had taught her only minutes before; and beyond that, an injured Sandra staying far out of the way of the fight brewing in the center of the room.

For her part, Blackpearl was holding her own, but making no progress, and her frustration was building as she continued her fruitless attacks. She paused, breathing heavily from the exertion, and her core seemed to want to speak to her. She stopped to listen.

It was not words with which it spoke, but a resonance stretching forth; and she knew what she had to do. She called on the city _itself_, to the voices and the Mana that had been grasping for her ever since she had entered its bounds. "Goddess give me strength," she prayed, and as the powers of Etansel itself surged through her core, she struck.

The hit scored clean and solidly this time, and as it shattered the construct the Lord of Jewels had created from his demonic soul, she felt the splintering of energy as he withered back to the form in which he began. _A spell of truth_, she thought with satisfaction, giving silent thanks to stones that made up the Jumi city. _Anuella would be proud._

The Lord of Jewels looked around… confused. Sandra, meanwhile, had pulled herself painfully to her feet, her expression reflecting her physical suffering; and Blackpearl suppressed an urge to smile. "So… close…" the demon gasped. "I only need... a little... more… strength…"

"And where do you expected to find it?" taunted Blackpearl; but suddenly she realized the answer.

Alexandra looked at her with deep regret. "Lady Blackpearl… you were the one who taught us that to a knight the life of a guardian is more precious than her own." A knife whipped out, and Alexandra held it in midair, as she turned to the Lord of Jewels. "Please… master… take my core to save Florina…"

"Indeed I will," the demon smirked, and before Blackpearl could protest, Alexandra neatly excised her own core. She had plenty of practice doing so, after all.

Distantly, Blackpearl noted Alexandra collapsed to the ground and dissolve into sparkles of light, dying as did every other Jumi; but she did not have even a moment to spare for mourning. Before her, the Lord of Jewels began to _change_, into something more horrid and monstrous than before.

Blackpearl took in the scene analytically, instinctively assessing the situation. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ariesa joined her side, weapon in hand, and together they braced themselves to face the thing that the Lord of Jewels had become.

"I have returned," it ground out. "Join me, now!"

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Ariesa shivered with the sudden chill that filled her, although in truth, she felt little cold. It was more of a sense of warmth that she would have normally expected, but was not there. Blackpearl, beside her, surveyed the situation impassively, but slight flickers of movement gave her agitation away.

She could not explain where she was exactly; for all she knew, she could still be in the chambers of the Clarius, though this place looked nothing like it. Then again, maybe they were in some remote corner of the universe; a sparkling vortex glittered and swirled around them, the residues of the cores of the hapless Jumi who had been absorbed by the demon.

In any case, there was nothing to be done about it, so… exchanging a glance with her aunt for confidence, she resolutely decided to shove her fear away. It stayed there for a moment, but threatened to come up all over again when the demon appeared, his monstrous shape constantly twisting, contorting, in a way that she could not say which end went up. Slowly, its form settled into a rotund, legless, winged creature, like a twisted parody of a dragon, encrusted in jewels across its back and head, all the colors of the rainbow shimmering across its skin. Somehow beautiful and disgusting all rolled into one.

Blackpearl gave the barest of nods, and Ariesa dove in.

Her spear first drove into the demon's side with a sickening, gloppy sound, the tear oozing a sickly, greenish blood. Despite herself, Ariesa found herself smiling; at least she knew the thing could be hurt.

A powerful hammer strike from Blackpearl scored its other side, and it wobbled slightly in midair, before one tentacle whipped out of nowhere, growing enormous, hard claws that swiped at Blackpearl. She nearly dodged, but not enough; one caught and tore her skin, reopening the now nearly-healed wound the jewel beast had inflicted on her.

"Are you alright?" Ariesa called, barely able to catch Blackpearl's nod as she grabbed the opening she had spied, striking again and again, slicing, jabbing, hurting it any way she could to give Blackpearl a chance to regroup. She was succeeding in… annoying it, at the very least. It flinched from every blow, twisting, tumbling in midair, trying to avoid Ariesa's blade.

The jewels across its body shimmered crazily, and Ariesa felt a pang of regret, wondering if she was also fighting all of the Jumi, if they would be killed right along with the other demon, never to return. _Elazul_, she thought, trying desperately not to allow herself to be distracted, letting her body move to its own will. She carefully steered away from the hard jewels that covered the monster's body, afraid of what might happen were one of those to shatter, aiming for the soft flesh in between.

Blackpearl seemed to be thinking much the same; the Jumi was holding back, now, her larger, heavier, hammer unable to work around the jewels so easily or neatly. _This is all on me_, Ariesa realized with a knot in the pit of her stomach. She gave Blackpearl a significant nod, and the one she got in return showed that Blackpearl had caught her meaning.

The Jumi woman switched to the defensive, her strikes calculated to cover Ariesa and clear a path for the sprite. They slipped into a natural rhythm, working in harmony as if they had always fought side-by-side.

She struck true, again and again, but her glee began to fade as she realized she was making little progress. No matter how many tears appeared in its flesh, no matter how much pus-like blood spilled out of gaping wounds, it wasn't slowing down. Not a bit.

She realized the pressure had gotten to her, as sword-sharp spines snapped out of its body, only a last-second twist saving her from being impaled on them. Blackpearl slammed her hammer into the demon wildly to give Ariesa a chance to escape; but her desperate gesture had a cost. Claws reached for Blackpearl, tearing across her chest, only narrowly missing her core, and Lady Blackpearl tumbled forward, a mass of ripped clothes and bleeding injuries.

Pure rage drove her as Ariesa drove her spear into the body of the Lord of Jewels with a strength she didn't know she had. It knocked him off balance, rolling over and over into the distance, and though it gave her a second to breathe, she knew it would not be enough.

Abandoning physical attacks for the moment, it switched to magic instead, and suddenly razor-sharp slivers of jewels rained out of nowhere. Ariesa instinctively curled up into a ball to protect herself, most of the projectiles missing her; but she cringed every time one sliced into her exposed skin. She barely had a chance to breathe before boulders rained down on her instead, crashing down and disappearing once again into wherever they had begun, battering her as she struggled to rise.

Blackpearl was struggling to rise once again, and though Ariesa felt a surge of pride at how the Jumi was trying to fight still, it was obvious that she was far too gravely injured. She could not even pull herself up, much less wield a weapon.

The Lord of Jewels tensed, and Ariesa panicked, realizing another magic attack was coming. "What do I do?" she cried plaintively to Blackpearl,

"It's a demon!" she called back to Ariesa. "It needs Mana to finish it off!"

"I don't have any!" Ariesa wailed.

"Come here!" Blackpearl ordered, and Ariesa dodged the spells raining down on them to where Blackpearl was balancing herself on one knee.

The other woman raised her head, visible strain around her eyes. "There's only one way," she said, and took Ariesa's hand, raising it to her own core.

Ariesa gasped, as she was filled once again with the same bond that Pearl had created between them at the Tower of Leires. Fainter, yes, but definitely there… "It's not as strong," Blackpearl told her as if reading her thoughts. "A knight-knight bond can't be created, so I had to use the residue of when I was a… guardian…" she forced the word out awkwardly, the stress of holding the irregular bond wearing on her. "And it won't last long. There is no time, I will give you all the strength I have. Hurry!"

Behind them, the injured Lord of Jewels could be heard to be lumbering forward again, and Ariesa whirled around, positioning herself between the creature and the injured Blackpearl. She tensed, ready to defend, and looking for her chance to strike.

It lunged towards her, the bulbous mass surging forward, and as her spear made contact, she felt Mana bursting through her, starting in her insides and racing outward, through her arm, through the spear, and the Lord of Jewels screamed as the weapon made contact. A ring of light, like embers on paper, traveled outward from where her spear had pierced his hide, dying to leave a charred, blackened ring of flesh.

Ariesa did not waste any time. She swung, jabbed, nicked, and drove her weapon into the beast again and again, pulling a little harder on Blackpearl each time, leaving the demon full of light-burnt holes, surprisingly normal muscle and tissue peeking from underneath. A dozen trails of acidic, greenish blood trickled…. Almost not across the floor, such as it was, but trailing off into midair, and Ariesa found herself struggling to dodge those as much as the enemy.

It had only been minutes, but the bond to Blackpearl was fading already, and Ariesa knew it was now or never. She raised her weapon for a killing blow…

…and some of that acrid, sizzling blood splashed on hear spear, her hand. She screamed in pain, dropping the weapon reflexively and wiping off the blood on her skirt before it could dissolve her skin. It was only a couple of droplets, but the fabric melted away from them, leaving torn holes in its place.

The Lord of Jewels did not waste the opportunity, and suddenly his spiked tail slammed into Ariesa, sending her flying and skidding across whatever invisible surface they were fighting on. She rolled quickly onto hands and knees, shaking the spots from her vision, to find an enraged, injured demon floating over her.

Her stomach dropped as she realized her spear lay some distance away - though she noted with some sort of odd, removed satisfaction, the demon blood had dripped off it to leave it undamaged. _Elazul would be pleased to know that_, she thought suddenly, irrationally, as the demon reared over her and she forced down panic, struggling to figure a way out.

Her hand only brushed it; she had almost forgotten she was carrying it. Elazul's Sword. _The Sword of Fate._

A quick, practiced move, as natural to her as breathing, whipped the weapon out of its sheath and upwards. _Destruction_, it almost seemed to whisper to her. She yanked as hard as she could on the bond to Blackpearl, so roughly she could _feel_ the pain she caused the other woman, but she had no time to be sorry for it, as the demon crashed forward on top of her.

The sword slid easily inside it, gutting it, tearing through its stomach, Mana bursting from the sword a hundred times more strongly than from the spear. It began to dissolve before her very eyes, and she curled up into a ball, waiting for its blood to pour over her and the pain she would feel as it sizzled away skin from bone.

It never came. This time, it was a quick, gentle surge, not one she _pulled_ from her companion, but one _sent_ to her as the last of the bond faded away, wrapping her in a safe, warm cocoon of Mana. The last pieces of the demon disappeared as well, not dissolving into motes of light, but rather collapsing into a thousand pinpricks of inky darkness, darker than even black could ever hope to be.

And as each of those pinpricks winked out of existence… lights popped up to take their place. No, not lights. _Sparkles_.

"It's the Jumi cores," Blackpearl said, arriving out of nowhere to pull Ariesa to her feet, though it seemed the older woman did so only to lean on her for support.

"How badly are you hurt?" asked Ariesa in concern.

"Only exhausted. The physical injuries are gone," Lady Blackpearl told her, motioning to now-unbroken skin, visible through the holes of a dress ripped and torn. "But it does not matter. Look what you have done," she breathed, gazing forward in wonder.

One by one, the sparkles formed into jewels, cores, falling with clinks that resounded like the tones of music, and with every core that was returned, the sparkling vortex faded away, and the chamber of the Clarius came back into view. The notes formed a symphony, rising in crescendo to trickle back off again, and they saw Florina stretched out before them, weakly lifting one hand, then slowly raising her upper body. And as the last note echoed away, she sat up to find the ladies Blackpearl and Ariesa awaiting her.

------------------------------------

Blackpearl walked over and lay the bejeweled staff reverently before the Clarius. "We brought it home," she said, and she and Florina looked at each other, knight to guardian, as the dead quiet settled over the city once again, more palpable than ever.

"You're alright!" exclaimed Ariesa, and Blackpearl shot her a reluctant glance.

"No," Florina said sadly. "It was only the rest that Alexandra gave me that helped me recover my health… but not the thing that matters most. What Sandra wanted to do - it did not work. I have no more strength than before. I cannot heal even one with my tears."

"So the loss was all for nothing?" Ariesa asked incredulously.

Lady Blackpearl, the oldest of the Jumi, shook visibly in anger. "Were the Jumi really always destined to die out? We are all that is left? How can that be?" she demanded, though neither of the women in the room had an answer.

"I…" The Clarius paused, as if afraid to utter the next words. "I do not know." She looked a little healthier, yes, but sadness seemed to run deeper than ever. "I did not expect this when I asked you to return here," she murmured poignantly.

Ariesa's eyes suddenly widened, and Blackpearl's stomach dropped as she realized what the young woman had found, even before she saw the oval stone of gold-flecked blue among the piles of stones scattered across the room.

"Elazul…" Ariesa moaned plaintively, plopping on the ground as her spear clattered beside her. She seemed to change her mind, picking up the weapon and fondling it with an almost intimate caress, standing up and leaning on it as she stared at the stone in her hand.

Florina gasped, even before Blackpearl saw it. "Ariesa, no!" she cried out… but it was too late.

It was just the one tear, falling from the girl's eye, but as soon as it left, the color of her skin seemed to dull, life visibly draining from her… Distraught, the girl barely seemed to notice the death that was taking her over, the life that was going away, and Blackpearl, to her horror, could _feel_ her own core reaching out for that life, and found herself powerless to stop it.

------------------------------------

Ariesa heard Blackpearl's shout of "No!" like a reprimand, but it was somewhere far away from her.

All she could think about was the gold-flecked blue stone in her hands, fingering the crack that still remained, though the rest, thankfully, was whole. _Elazul_. That was… him? Really, it was? She couldn't wrap her mind around it, his life in the palm of her hand, in such a literal way.

She felt as if part of her soul had gone cold. Someone she had wanted to care for, to protect… and he had _died_. The cold fingers of despair penetrated her body, and emotion became a blissfully distant memory.

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Elazul first sensed Blackpearl out of the corner of his eye, and felt a surge of relief, as any knight would for his guardian.

Which rapidly fell away as he realized what he was leaning against.

She was stone, cold stone, not the odd warmth of his right hand or his core, but cold, dead stone, a sickly gray color that disgusted him more than a corpse.

"No," he whispered. _Ariesa_. Absentmindedly, he picked up his sword from where she must have dropped it. _I gave this to her so she would live, _he told himself angrily_, and she survived the fight – for this?_

The most horrifying part of it, was that he knew the answer. In the last few seconds before consciousness had returned, he had felt himself pulling on her life despite his will, yanking it out of her and into himself.

"She must have cared for you very much," Florina told him, her tone a bit odd. Blackpearl only looked at him, considering.

Elazul looked around the room, scattered jewels littered everywhere. "Is this all there is? She gave her life just to bring me back?" He had never hated being Jumi the way he had at that moment, and found himself barely suppressing the urge to kick the nearest core.

"She may have saved the race," Florina said softly.

"_How?"_ Elazul asked incredulously.

Blackpearl looked at her guardian skeptically. "Florina, you do not have the strength! Not for even one, and definitely not for all this!"

Florina nodded. "You are right, Lady Blackpearl. Myself, I cannot do it. But I think… I think there might be a way, if I can reach for Mana directly. That was what we wanted to do, when you left to find the Sword, remember?"

Blackpearl shook her head. "But I never found it, and… I am not strong enough, you cannot pull that much power through me…"

Florina placed one hand on Blackpearl's arm to calm her. "I meant… with him."

Elazul started in surprise. "But I am not your knight. It won't work."

"True, _you_ are not my knight…" Florina replied, "but _she_ is."

Elazul let his eyes drift over to meet Blackpearl's, and her expression was some of her own determination, and some of Pearl's sadness, mixed together even as she was still having trouble comprehending herself as Elazul's guardian.

"My core is damaged," he said, and his throat ran dry as he said those words. "Will you be able to?"

"I cannot heal it, if that is what you are asking. But I will not need to." She looked speculatively at Elazul's right arm, and he uncomfortably grasped her meaning. "Blackpearl will be able to buffer it some, in any case. The oldest Jumi, and the youngest," Florina concluded. "Appropriate, somehow."

Blackpearl took a deep breath. "I am ready, my lapis knight," she told him. "You?"

"Ready, my pearl guardian." Blackpearl raised an eyebrow, but a small smile crept across her face as she reached to take his right hand, her warm fingers of flesh intertwining with his of stone, touching in that familiar way of two who know each other more than any other two in the world.

Florina gently reached one small hand towards Blackpearl's core, the other gripping the Jumi staff. A quiet, spiritual buzz seemed to fill the air, and the jewels of the staff began to softly glow as had the Mana Stones…

Elazul had been expecting a pull, firm perhaps, but nothing prepared him for the _jolt_ which followed, a wrench that nearly knocked him off his feet. He stumbled from the shock, and it was only Blackpearl's hand still firmly clasped in his that kept him upright.

The power, the pressure built, and built, until he wasn't sure he could hold it any longer; and finally, he stopped trying. As soon as he surrendered to it, it poured through him like a flood, a roaring blaze of Mana, and distantly he sensed Blackpearl, finely shaping the flows, she the only thing keeping him from being torn off and splintered into the cosmos.

It was the worst pain and the sweetest pleasure, all rolled into one, and even as he felt as if his body was being crushed to pieces and he was gasping for breath, still he wanted _more_, driven on by sheer determination not to let Ariesa have died in vain. If he died, that was fine with him; but not _her_, he thought distantly, and thought began to fade away completely as his core threatened to give in.

Suddenly, abruptly, the connection broke, and he shirked in pain as it was jaggedly torn away. He fell backwards against the wall, and Blackpearl crumbled, releasing her grip; as he struggled to hold himself up, her collapsed form faded into that of Pearl.

His stomach roiled, his legs weakened. He pressed his back against the wall and let himself slide down until he hit the floor with a thud. Pearl rose slightly to lean against his shoulder, breathing heavily and sweat dripping off her face nearly as much as his. He wrapped one arm around her comfortingly, not sure if he was holding her up or vice versa.

The Clarius sat on her throne, eyes bright, the picture of health.

He felt it before he saw it, as his eyes drooped, threatening sleep. But the subtle change in the Mana around him multiplied, snapping his eyes wide open, to be stunned by what he saw.

There were _Jumi_ – Jumi all around them. _At least a thousand_, he said to himself, packing even the enormous chamber of the Clarius and spilling out of the doorway into the terraces beyond. Voices could be heard all around; excited, afraid, confused, jubilant, and occasionally some tone of authority trying to get them all in some sort of order. Not that anyone was listening.

He forgot his exhaustion and nausea. Pearl slipped out of his grasp as he leaped up to run to the one person who had not been rescued. Jumi all around stared at him in shock as he ran his hand over the stone image of Ariesa, as hard and lifeless as it had been before.

Behind him, he heard familiar footsteps, and turned. "Pearl…" he said pleadingly, but she only shook her head sadly.

"Then what good are the Jumi, dammit!" he shouted, and suddenly, nearly all of the buzz of conversation… stopped. He did not care, grabbing angrily for the nearest guardian, only realizing once he was already holding a fistful of fabric that it was Diana. The leader of the Jumi looked at him reproachfully.

"I like you, kid, but you had better let go of her," the voice of Rubens threatened mildly.

"No," Diana brushed her lover's concern off. "He has reason. But…" she turned to Elazul sadly, "…what you want to do here… it is still not possible. All of the Mana you brought us, every last bit was poured into the Jumi."

"But Mana healed us from…" Elazul trailed off, unwilling to say it.

"That it is because we are Jumi," Diana told him, her look sympathetic, almost warm. "We are part of Mana. She - " Diana waved one hand almost dismissively at the statue – "is not. It is only our tears that can break the curse, and though we have returned, we still have none."

"How can you say such a thing?" cried a young and passionate voice, and Elazul turned to see Esmeralda barging forward in pure fury. The guardian, nearly as young as Elazul, stood defiantly against her elders. "We can't do this for one who gave her life for us? I think I can cry, what about the rest of you?" Her eyes met Elazul's, and he recalled the spark he remembered from first meeting her, the spark of those who are too young to give up.

"Maybe there is potential for the Jumi still," Pearl whispered softly beside him.

"We can only hope," Elazul said, reaching down to squeeze her hand affectionately. She gave him a quick smile in return. _Maybe we _are_ young, stupid and naïve_, he thought to himself, _but that's nothing compared to losing that hope._

"What do _you_ know about her?" Diana asked of Esmeralda, her voice now returning to being imperious and demanding.

Elazul finally let go of Diana's dress. "Ariesa was Esmeralda's knight for a little bit," Pearl put in.

"What?" Their leader's face was incredulous.

"It's a long story," Elazul said, hurrying them along. "Can you do it or not?"

Diana paused, and shut her eyes. "For someone not Jumi, to get the power that is needed… it would have to be from all. It is the same way we make a Clarius," she finished breathily.

"So it can be done," Elazul said softly. "Diana, please…" Doubtful voices spread through the gathering, fear that their newly-regained lives might be taken away once again, fear that they had nothing left to give.

To his surprise, it was Pearl that stepped forward. "Silence," she said, her voice strangely commanding for its high pitch. "I was the one who brought you all together. Remember who you are!" Incredulous looks met the small, unfamiliar Jumi guardian. "I am the Lady Blackpearl. I have given you direction for a thousand years. You must listen to me now!" Pearl practically roared, her voice echoing off the chambers of the Clarius.

Hushed whispers travelled around, and Elazul looked around in worry until Rubens stepped forward. "She is who she says she is. Listen to your core!" demanded the one once called the Flame of Hope. "I wasn't sure at first, but now I am. Lady Blackpearl has returned to us!" Voices became louder, and as a dozen-odd voices of those of the Lucidia fell behind his to confirm Pearl's identity, Elazul saw a bit of shame creep over the other Jumi.

"You were able to figure that out?" Elazul heard Diana whisper to Rubens quietly. "I was not."

"Perhaps I still had more hope than you," he told her gently, raising one hand to her cheek, caressing it affectionately.

It was Florina's voice that finally clinched it. The Clarius had remained silent, but as she spoke, her clear, peaceful voice shushed the race of the Jumi more than any shout could. "The young one has the right of it," she said, and the group bowed at the first words heard from their most precious one. "I give you the request, and my blessing. Ariesa is the one who returned us all home."

Florina stood, herself barely taller that Pearl, but there was a color to her cheeks that showed her renewed strength. The other Jumi did not fail to notice, as nods of agreement spread.

Elazul had no idea how a Clarius was made, but if they were doing something, that was good enough for him. Esmeralda had somehow jostled closer to him, and he gave her a questioning look. "I have no idea either," she said, shrugging.

Diana stood in the center of the gathering, raising herself to her full height, her presence imposing. "Everyone, bind your souls together," she ordered, and some of the Jumi began to fall to their knees.

"It will take us all," added Florina. "We will have to pull through a single core."

"I'll do it," Elazul announced almost before the Clarius had finished speaking.

"No, Elazul!" cried Pearl, he hearing a trace of her newer, frightened voice. "Let me!"

"Elazul will do it," insisted Florina firmly. "Diana will direct it." Diana nodded, and began directing Jumi to the appropriate positions.

Elazul found himself awkwardly standing between the Clarius and the leader of the Jumi, feeling somewhat conspicuous. He snuck a glance at the crystallized form of Ariesa - the cold, unliving form - to remind himself of what they were trying to do.

Diana leaned in. "Your core is damaged, so I will have to lead this in for you." She touched his core in the age-old Jumi gesture, and Elazul nearly jumped at the sensation of dignity, age, and wisdom, so contrary to what he had felt from her before. Not exactly like Blackpearl, perhaps just a hair less resilient… but still, not so terribly unlike his guardian.

It was a long wait as one by one, the citizens of the Jumi city came to Diana to give each a small part of their own life, transferred through Diana with Elazul as the reservoir of sorts. It did not hurt, not like what Florina had done; this was Mana that was already part of the Jumi, part of who he was, and it filled him with sweetness, with love, with life. _This is what Mana was supposed to be_, he thought to himself.

"You can't hold it in forever," Diana told him, as the last Jumi stepped away.

"I'm hardly planning to become a Clarius," Elazul replied dryly. Besides, even more than he wanted those feelings for himself, he wanted them for someone else. He stepped towards the statue that was Ariesa, noting that her expression carried none of the poignancy he would have hoped – it was nothing, without her spirit inside it.

He was at first bewildered where to touch, but finally shrugged and made his best estimate on where a core might be found, that indentation just above the collarbone. He traced one finger down her cold neck to that spot, and let the flow of Mana leave him, gently filling her with life. And even as it left him, this time he felt no loss; if anything the warm feelings seemed to magnify as she took them from him, and he wondered if this is what it had once felt like when a guardian cried. Slowly, the colors of life replaced gray, and he forced himself to concentrate on what he was doing, and not to throw his arms around her that very instant.

And then she opened her eyes.

------------------------------------

Ariesa's head felt foggy, and her eyes were a little blurry, and she was trying to remember how hard she had last been hit by the demon.

_Demon. Was supposed to be fighting. Important_. She fumbled for her weapon and wobbled slightly, only to feel someone reach out to steady her.

"Ariesa, careful," came a voice that sounded painfully familiar.

"_Elazul_?" she asked in shock, and her eyes slowly focused to see a very familiar face. "How…?"

He tilted his head to the left, and she followed to see a room full of massed people… No, not just people. _Jumi_, she realized in shock. "What happened?" she asked weakly.

"I'll tell you later," he said, smiling. _Smiling_. A thought drifted up. She couldn't remember the last time he had really, truly smiled, not being sarcastic or joking, just pure happiness with no worry or anger around it.

It pleased her, and she tried to smile back, before another wave of weakness took over, and her legs gave out under her. His arms closed around her, keeping her from crashing into the floor in a very undignified manner.

She did not resist as he helped her over onto some sort of cushy surface, sitting down next to her as he gently laid her back. A young, brown-haired woman in green robes drifted over to her – _Florina_, she recalled, and wondered what the Clarius wanted with her.

To her relief, the Jumi seemed content to let her be tended to, now milling around amongst each other as if at some giant cocktail party. Ariesa took in the sight as a whole, focusing on no one in particular, just the overall tableau of people alive once again and greeting each other in wonder.

"How are you feeling?" Florina asked, one hand to her chest and the other to her head.

"Tired," Ariesa replied, "so tired…"

"That's good," Florina practically beamed. "That means your body accepted the Mana it was offered."

Ariesa was confused. "Mana? What?"

"Just rest, now," she heard Elazul's voice, and dimly the sound of footsteps receding, leaving the chamber. "It's done. There's nothing to worry about."

She gave in, slumping against his shoulder, and he gripping her tightly. "It's over," she sighed, "it's over…"

------------------------------------

As the initial rush of excitement wore out, the Jumi slowly found themselves curious as to what had happened to their home outside, and left the chambers of the Clarius behind in favor of the city below. Minutes ticked by as the chamber emptied, a subtle nod from Florina spurring the stragglers along.

Ariesa lay in a sort of half-doze, not moving but still conscious as Elazul filled her in on what she had missed. It seemed to calm her, as did the moments of rest, and it was perhaps an hour or so later that her eyes opened with a refreshed calm to them, the chambers now nearly empty save for a bare handful hesitant to emerge into the city as if it would all disappear if they left.

Elazul waited out of respect as the last Jumi trickled out, but finally it was only the two of them with Pearl and Florina in the chambers of the Clarius, and he couldn't wait anymore. He didn't care if the Clarius was watching, he didn't care if his own _guardian _was watching, he pulled her to him with a roughness he had not used before, and kissed her fully, deeply, for once exactly as he wanted to.

She wasn't shy about returning it, as exhaustion fell away for the moment. "Elazul..." was all she said, her eyes wide.

"Don't cry," he told her. "That's gotten you into enough trouble for one day." She broke out laughing, and threw her arms around his neck.

They only held each other for a moment, as if they were well and truly alone, he relishing the feel of every inch of her, remembering his fear only a short while before when he thought he would never see her again. And it was in that moment he _knew_.

He turned to her, and opened his mouth slowly, carefully. "Ariesa... I..." he began… but it wouldn't come out, even with her big brown eyes staring at him expectantly. He was barely able even to tell himself what _it_ was, but he knew it was right there, on the tip of his tongue, and it _wouldn't come out._

Fortunately, she didn't seem to mind, and only slumped against him again, sighing peacefully. Eventually the moment subsided, and the two pulled away with reluctance. "Shall we go down into the city? You could show me around," Ariesa asked him flirtatiously, pulling herself carefully to her fee, gingerly testing her strength.

"A moment, Elazul," Florina spoke up. Elazul turned towards the Clarius, slightly puzzled.

"Me too?" Pearl asked.

"No, Pearl. Please enjoy this day." Florina's tone was strange, and after a moment, Elazul realized the difference. It was the way Pearl usually spoke to _him_, the way a guardian spoke to a knight. Strange, to see his tiny pale guardian addressed so, but there were many things here that he still needed to work out in his head, and it was all a little overwhelming.

"Oh." However Florina spoke to her, that was still Pearl's voice he heard respond. "I guess I'll show Ariesa around then."

Ariesa gave him a wide smile, before turning to follow Pearl out the door. Elazul watched the two go, wondering how to find the balance between them. Behind him, Florina patiently waited while he had his moment, then turned his attention back to her.

"Are you going to tell me it's forbidden?" Elazul challenged her.

"It has never been forbidden, exactly," Florina told him. "You are too young yet to truly realize the impact of who, or what, you are, and what you might be getting yourself into."

"But you're hardly putting your blessing on it," he pointed out.

"It is not me that makes the difference, it is _you_," the Clarius told him. "And you know inside; that's why you couldn't bring yourself to say it. You are a Jumi, and you are not free to love her… yet."

Elazul drooped. "I suspected as much," he replied glumly, "but _why_?"

Florina arose from her resting place, delicately picking up skirts from the floor. She was a slight woman, but something about her made her seem like a queen, more so than even Diana. Perhaps she was the closest thing they had.

"Because I don't know if she could be healed again," the Clarius told him. "The curse was always that, a curse, and it could not be undone. Not by anyone short of the Goddess herself, we thought. It's never been done before… and I'm not sure it could be done again. There was a little something more that made it happen."

"What do you mean?" Elazul leaned his head to the side uncomfortably.

"Who knows?" Florina's demeanor was unreadable. "Mana is changing, but in a way even I can't explain, nor say if it is for good or bad. But the question now is this. Can you love her without making her cry?"

Elazul turned his face to the door, but where he was looking, he couldn't say. "No," he replied, slumping in frustration. "It's not really love otherwise."

"Then only one avenue remains," she told him. "It matters for you, and it matters for all the Jumi, or we will face the same problems we always have, all over again. These stones - " she gestured to her core – "can only do so much. They are only memories, after all. The true strength is in the true Mana Stone, alive and unrestrained again."

"Mana unrestrained…" Elazul asked cautiously. "You can't mean…"

"The Goddess must return." Florina uttered the words with the confidence of simple truth.

_The Sword_. That was what she was talking about. It had been Pearl who had told him of it, and every since then, he had been gathering only bits and pieces of information. But all led to the inescapable conclusion. _Are you sure you want something of that power? _Nunuzac had asked him. He wasn't, but he wasn't sure he had another choice.

He met Florina's eyes for a long moment, seeing deep inside to an ancient wisdom that belied her childlike demeanor. "I understand."

"There is one thing more," she said softly, and reached to pull his tunic back slightly from his neck, revealing the gold-dusted lapis core within, the crack sharply visible within the clarity. He flinched involuntarily as she touched it with one fingertip, but she laid a hand on his right arm soothingly.

"Hold still," she whispered, and leaned in, placing her hands lightly on his shoulders. Elazul closed his eyes, and he tensed up, an odd sense of fear filling him.

The first drops stung like salt in an open wound, and Elazul shuddered. But, like any good knight, he braced himself and endured. And every wet drop that splashed on the stone felt _different_, and he felt the stone recrystallizing, knitting itself together once again. And at the same time… his mind seemed to grow peaceful, almost euphoric, and a strength he didn't know he had was bubbling up.

He opened his eyes to see her last tear, glowing as if with a light of its own, drip from her eyes, warm like a lover's kiss. A kiss… He tried to remember Terra, so long ago; but it was too late. She was gone, and Ariesa was all he could see.

He was fingering the unbroken core curiously when she pulled his arm away, grasping his right hand in both her tiny ones. "And now this," she said soothingly.

"No," he said, tugging his arm away. "Not yet."

She held his hand still, but did not pull further, only letting her expression drift. "I see," she said finally. "You're right, you should keep this. You will know when it's time to let it go."

------------------------------------

As Elazul made his way through the city, the Jumi were starting to lose some of their inhibitions. They glanced and whispered in curiosity as he walked past, some openly staring and pointing at the young Jumi they had never seen before, wondering where he came from and how he had come to join them.

Not that he really had an answer for them. _But he was about to get one_, he told himself - from one of the few Jumi who did know him. These were his people, and he knew them not at all.

He had caught a glimpse of Sappho out of the corner of his eye, holding back in the overflowing chambers of the Clarius, but now he tracked the man down determinedly. He finally found him at one of the rocky outcrops of Etansel's many levels, staring intently at a smattering of turquoise stones embedded in the rocks. The older man looked the same as he always had, his face still bearing a grim expression; and Elazul couldn't help but wonder why, when everyone else was celebrating.

"You." The relationship between the two men had always had the slightest aura of challenge, and it was no different now, the more so for the anger that burned within Elazul.

Sappho turned, noncommittally, seeming unsurprised to see Elazul there. "Elazul," he greeted him politely, sweeping his gaze over the city. "And after we were driven out, suddenly we are all surprised to find ourselves back home."

"You've held back on answers for too long," Elazul said, gripping his sword hilt instinctively. "It's time for you to tell me the rest."

He was expecting argument, but Sappho actually chuckled. "Let go of the sword, boy, what exactly are you planning to do with it?" Elazul might have retorted, had he not seen the faintest indication of what could be pride in Sappho's dark blue eyes. He motioned for Elazul to sit on the stone next to him.

A long silence resulted, Elazul was waiting to be interrogated; but then he realized Sappho expected him to do the asking, to say what he wanted instead of having it handed to him. Like a man, not a boy. Nevertheless, he found it awkward to begin. "Where do I come from?"

The one word answer was surprising. "Vadise."

Sappho waited for shock to dissolve before continuing. "She came to me one day, with a child she said she had met through the fairies. She had given the child a piece of her own stone of Tree, and she needed someone to raise a child Jumi. I think she wanted to find Blackpearl, but it's perhaps better that she didn't. Blackpearl has never been the maternal sort." Something in the familiar way he used her name tickled Elazul's imagination, and made him wonder if there was more to it than that. He made a mental note to see if Pearl might be inclined to tell him. "I took you on, and watched to see if you might lean more towards being a knight or guardian; then pushed you out to start on the path that both Vadise and I knew you must follow."

Elazul let it all sink in. "Why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

"Were you ready to hear it?" Sappho asked mildly, poking Elazul's core. "You are the only one the white dragon ever granted a piece of your stone, and though she did not choose to clarify, obviously she thought there was a reason to make an exception. You were a young man even by ordinary human standards; would you have been ready for what was to be placed on you?"

"Not really," Elazul admitted.

Sappho turned back to the stones he had been examining earlier. "Blackpearl, naturally, was my knight, when I was Clarius," he said, ignoring Elazul's wide-eyed expression of shock. _Sappho, once a Clarius_? It explained a lot. "But besides her my knight was my nearest and dearest friend. Quiyan, a knight of aquamarine."

Suddenly, the turquoise fragments had a whole new meaning. Not gems; bits of a shattered core, a Jumi life snuffed out forever, as fragile as the too-short human lives they had thought they had escaped. Sappho's expression was of still-raw pain.

"How did he die?" Elazul ventured carefully.

"You can't guess?" Sappho asked. Elazul looked away, embarrassed. "The Empire invasion. The same one that took Esmeralda's sisters, and many more." He paused, eyes drifting into the memory. "But most of those cores were taken by those who understood their power. This soldier did not, and as Quiyan died defending me, he shattered the core with a blow of his sword, forever stealing my friend's life away… I should have run, but I hid, and as the soldier walked off laughing, I returned to scoop up the broken pieces. Most of us fled, but a small handful of the Jumi died this way, and I couldn't let it end there. I came back a year later, to a deserted, dead city, to finally bring him home."

Elazul looked out over the valley below, the steep and treacherous valley that had been meant to keep the Empire and all others out. Even it had not been enough.

"I am sorry I did not tell you this sooner," Sappho said with uncharacteristic gentleness. "And I am glad to finally have the chance to tell you I am proud of what you have become."

That snapped Elazul to attention, and a brief meeting of eyes was all the acknowledgment he gave. Yet even that was enough, to remind him how far he had come since that time so long ago when Sappho had sent him on his way.

Another thought occurred to him. "What of Sandra – I mean, Alexandra?" Elazul asked. "What do you know of her? Will she come after us once again?"

"I know little more than you," Sappho admitted. "She was close to Florina, and her knight before Blackpearl. But I think perhaps we are in little danger from her. Her plan failed, and ironically, it was what brought the Jumi back together."

_What we want to do is not always what we should, and what we think is the right thing is sometimes wrong. _It was Ariesa who had said that. Though he hated thinking it, he found himself wondering nonetheless if Sandra wasn't thinking of the Jumi in her own twisted, convoluted way.

"I wonder what other surprises are left," he whispered, as he sat next to Sappho to gaze down into the valley below.

------------------------------------

Peace at last crept across the chambers of the Clarius, and darkness began to set over a city that this morning had awoken dead, and now went to sleep alive. Florina let the feelings wash over her, and she wondered.

_Those two were strange_, she thought. Elazul obviously didn't know how he survived the crack to his core… and if Lady Blackpearl was not inclined to tell him, she wouldn't, either. But even so… the crack she had healed had been dangerously deep, and for him to have survived that long, there must have been something more, something that went above and beyond what she saw in them. Something in the blood of Elazul, of Ariesa… and she lay in the still of the evening, trying slowly to unravel it, slightly troubled that she could not figure it out.

_The secrets are in the legends of the past,_ she thought, reaching her thoughts towards the ancient city itself. Dark settled in, and she stared out the window at the stars that littered the sky like a smattering of sparkling dust, like Mana itself lighting the way.

It was full dark when the figure finally emerged from where she had been hiding all this time, her core pulsing now a deep purple-red. "Alexandra," she greeted her.

Alexandra looked randomly around the chambers, filled with the echoes of breezes from up above, and the city from below. "I promised to heal you, and bring you safe back home," she finally said.

"So you said, when we left." Florina rose from her bed, shuffling gracefully to meet her visitor.

Alexandra dropped to one knee, the position from which a knight would honor the Clarius. "My lady... I know I can't ask your forgiveness..."

"You can ask," Florina replied softly. "I cannot promise you I will grant it."

"The Jumi…" Alexandra began. "They are not safe yet."

"This, I know," Florina said reasonably.

"I was a knight. I was _your_ knight." The words started to come out in a rush. "And to a knight, the life of her guardian is more precious than her own. And I gave you my life, Florina, but now… here I have it back. Makes one a bit arrogant, I guess." She shrugged. "The Jumi… there is a greater danger. I've seen things, Florina… a lot of things no one else here has. If things don't work out right…they might find themselves without tears once again, and maybe even you, this time."

"I know there is more going on than the Jumi in this world," Florina told her, "but soon the Goddess will return, and when she does, my own power will no longer matter."

"You mean, _if_ she does," Alexandra corrected, and Florina could only stare out her in wide-eyed shock.

"What do you mean?" she asked carefully, uncharacteristic anxiety creeping into her voice.

"I mean…" Alexandra shuddered. "Many worry, but I've _seen_ what happens when things are thrown out of balance. I've seen what it did to me, and frankly, I'm just another pebble." She brushed her own core with her fingertips. "But… listen to me, Florina. _The Goddess is in danger_."

Florina turned away, and found herself pacing circles around her chambers, too wound up now to even think of rest. Alexandra only watched her, still on one knee, until finally, the Clarius became more calm and collected once again. "I thank you for the warning, Alexandra," she said regally.

With more affection, she made her way back to the center of the room, and placed a hand on Alexandra's shoulder. "You kept your promise to me, and I made a promise to you, whether you know it or not." Alexandra looked up curiously.

Florina reached into her own core for all the pain and life that resided there. Tears dripped gently over the fallen Jumi, who visibly relaxed with each crystalline, life-giving drop, her core gently shimmering from green to purplish-black and back.

Finally, Florina stood back, and let her friend rise, the latter shaking her head in confusion. But the Clarius understood. That duality within her core would never leave her, but it combined in some sort of harmony now, the dissonance quieted. Chaos was not to be feared; Alexandra would simply need to learn how to use it.

"You must go now," Florina admonished. "It is not time for you to return home yet." Alexandra nodded in agreement. "But you must know that changes are coming, kings, queens, spirits, and goddesses of the past waiting to return. You must understand, Sandra," she continued with a hint of urgency. "When the time comes, you must join them."

"I will," Alexandra said, as if Florina had not known what she was going to say. She disappeared, that her only goodbye, as was her nature.

Florina felt a sudden emptiness that she hadn't expected, and only stood there for a long time, thinking. _The Goddess is in danger_, Alexandra had said; it was the Clarius's worst fears realized. This was not something that could be handled alone.

She sat back and let her mind drift into deep thought once again, trying to decided what to do next.

------------------------------------

Bud stirred slightly on the bench below the window, where he and Lisa had settled for a nap. He let his eyes open, reluctantly, and slowly the sound that had woken him penetrated his hearing.

It was rain. Raindrops pattering on the roof of the house, tinkling against the window.

He lay there for a long time, listening to the sound get louder, thinking of a million things. He was worried, for Ariesa, for Pearl. Even for Elazul, even though… on one hand he made Ariesa happy; on the other, he took her away from him and his sister.

The drizzle became a downpour, and the downpour became a storm, blocking out whatever early afternoon sun there might have been. Lisa finally lifted her head after an hour or so, and followed her brother's eyes.

She watching the rain tearing across the sky, the wind shaking the trees and occasionally hurling rain across the window with a crash, she flinching every time the wall of water struck. "It's like the sky is falling to pieces…" She turned to her brother. "Remember how we used to think that was the sky crying with the Jumi?"

"But now we know better. Jumi can't cry. We should give up on that kiddie stuff," Bud told her.

"Still…" Lisa looked back out the window. "Doesn't it make you wonder if it is Pearl crying? Or Elazul?"

"Pearl, maybe, I could see," Bud admitted, "but not Elazul. He's a knight. Knights don't cry," he insisted.

Lisa only harrumphed, effectively ending the conversation.

The day dragged on, hunger finally leading them downstairs to cook dinner themselves as they had for… how many days had it been? Somehow, just the two of them didn't seem like enough anymore; the house seemed empty, and Bud found himself wishing for Ariesa to come back, or that Daena was still staying over, or even that Thoma would stop by. But of course, with the weather being what it was, none of those were happening.

Lisa took control of the kitchen, as she always did, but Bud was perfectly happy to chop things under her direction. She lost herself in the organization; he lost himself in the repetition.

They sat down to have some sort of grown-up dinner, complete with a bottle of wine they had filched from Ariesa's cabinet, hoping she wouldn't be too put out with them. "What if she never comes back?" Lisa wondered, voicing the thought that was on both their minds.

"Then…" Bud forced confidence for his sister's sake. "Then it will still be you and me. We did fine that way for a long time. We could do it again."

"I suppose," Lisa replied absently. She was obviously unconvinced, and Bud felt guilty, wishing he could think of something that would make her feel better.

Instead, she drank from her wine cup pensively, Bud following her lead. Lisa claimed she liked the way it tasted; Bud didn't, but he was trying it out because girls seemed to like it. Ariesa and Daena always seemed to be having a good time when they drank the stuff, so he took a few more sips.

A lot more sips. The next thing he knew, he and Lisa were waking up groggily, on the living room floor, and sunlight was streaming through the front windows. His head pounded as he stood up, and Lisa mumbled something, ambling towards the front door. Bud stuck his head out the window, then ran back to his sister, shaking her awake.

"Lise," he told her, "get up. You've got to see this."

"Huh?" she asked, but let him pull her up and out the front door.

The sproutling was still there, as always, but for once it wasn't walking around, sitting on the stoop and only staring at the sky. "Wowww," it squeaked. "I like the sky!"

For once, Bud had to agree with it, and Lisa gasped when she looked up. The rain was only barely breaking, leaving the sky an early-morning purple rarely seen, and the clouds in the distance shimmered silver. And stretching across the sky was the widest rainbow he had ever seen, every color he knew, and a few he didn't.

They sat there on the front steps, just taking the beauty in. Lisa sniffled slightly, and Bud poked her. "You're not actually crying, are you?" he teased.

"No," she sobbed, and Bud put an arm around her with brotherly affection, they sitting there quietly together for a long time.

It was a movement in the distance that first caught his eye. "Look!" he urged his sister, pointing.

"What?" she asked, squinting. "There's nothing there." But soon enough, the figures came closer, and they leapt up as one to greet them.

Elazul was the first to come, and Lisa, surprisingly, gave him an enormous hug with a squeal of delight. He seemed shocked, but gently embraced her back paternally. Behind him was Pearl, quiet and shy as she always had been, and Bud suppressed an urge to follow his sister's lead.

And behind them came Ariesa, she seeming somehow… different, yet the same. Lisa let Elazul go, and ran to Ariesa; Bud forgot his manly dignity, and found him hugging her just the same, as the voices of brother and sister tumbled over each other in their excitement to see her.

Ariesa only smiled, and laughed, her eyes glowing with… _Mana_, was almost what Bud wanted to say, though that wasn't it. It was just how truly… _alive_ she looked, more than he could ever remember her being before.

"I'm back," she told them, giving Lisa a quick kiss on the cheek and ruffling Bud's hair. "I'm back!"

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**What gives, Meeerf? You said sixty chapters, but you've finished all the arcs by chapter 46! ** Glad you asked. As Elazul wondered, what surprises are left?

Well, how about a brief rundown of teasers?

We still have: a couple of confused elven teenagers trying to find their way. A Holy Knight getting chased right and left by fairies, and a Temple with a job opening for a High Priestess. A dragoon bored and stuck in the Underworld; a very nervous white dragon and her faithful, mournful dragoon. One very old Jumi trying to figure it all out, and a kid from an Empire hiding somewhere in the background. And a pairing that is moving waaay slower than Ariesa would like.

Let's not forget sproutlings and Wisdoms spouting odd things at every turn, a Sword of Mana that's been MIA since chapter 27, and a Goddess who had better get her act together soon.

See you next update!


	47. Secrets: Cage of dreams

**47. Secrets: Cage of dreams**

It was restless.

Or It would have been, if It had a true sort of consciousness, instead of that gentle river of the Goddess's power that pulsated through It, making It something like a living being, only not.

Humans, the Goddess's creations, called It the Sword, the Sword of Mana. Oversimplified, but it was all their brains could understand. It didn't actually understand these things of course, nor did It know that It did not understand, but It knew them nevertheless.

It knew It was some of the Goddess's power; part of her, but yet not. Made to corral the God-Beasts, as the humans thought of those swirling chaotic elements, and hold them, direct them in the way the Goddess wished. Things, concepts dangerous to be separate from the Goddess, open to the world She created… but necessary nonetheless.

Humans thought they could use that power. They had pursued it, sought it, fought each other for it. It remembered the one, the one that found It - _she? It wondered, though It knew nothing of gender, and knew It didn't know_ - pulling at It in the place (not that it was a place, but it was someplace) that had once been the Goddess's home. And the Goddess told the Sword to go with her.

There were others, after. The Sword cared not. It went with those who demanded Its power, and went to another just as easily, none realizing, in fact, that they were never meant to hold the Sword. They did not control It; It merely resided in them for a brief while. It went from place to place, person to person only to find Itself back home again.

And then It _felt_ it, the dying Goddess, from inside the one who wanted It. And when It was released, It found Itself, alone, nothing without the Goddess that was It.

It clattered to the ground, a shameful thing of mere metal, clinging to the Elementals It protected, the Elementals who watched what It had created. It cried out in Its own way, in a sort of pain, of loss, of abandonment, even as It felt the things It lost flow back into It.

But a new consciousness spoke to It, only a small voice whispering, but with the same feeling as the Goddess It had once known. _Hold on, _the voice told It_. You are still with me, you are still part of me_.

And It _did_.

It _knew_. It knew that It was still the key, the key to this new thing that was growing slowly but would be big; It knew it must be there.

Then the _other_ one came, something like the one It had left with, only… not. And she was looking for _It_. She came closer than any other being had to It in – a century? Was that the word? Some small amount of time. It knew she should not find It, that the Goddess was not ready for It to be found.

The Goddess was small, but strong. She knew to focus Her power, to protect that little bit of Herself that there was, and It knew It had the power to overcome her, and It was no longer indifferent to who used It. It did not want to be used.

So It ran from her, ran into the cage of dreams, and the Goddess stood strong against the other one, and that one was angry that she could not find It to break through. And the Goddess smiled, and whispered, and told It to _stay_, stay where It was, until someone needed It, until it was time, and then It would come to her once again.

It knew. It would do this for the Goddess.

It watched, It waited, It imagined.


	48. Legends: Cage of dreams

**48. Legends: Cage of dreams**

Lady Blackpearl leaned out the window of the Clarius's chambers, looking down on the towering tiers of the Jumi city beyond, a city now living and breathing with life as it had not in more than a hundred years. The rocks itself seemed to pulse in response.

"They wonder about the jewel hunter," she said. "No one knows the truth of her except the Lucidia… and Elazul. Diana does not know where she went, and chooses not to enlighten the people about her identity. They worry enough without knowing that detail - they worry she will return, they worry that their cores will now be hunted again."

"But for the most part they are happy, and hopeful. Have any wondered where Alexandra is?" Florina questioned.

"Not yet. Where do you think? Knowing her, she's probably still alive."

"Probably." The Clarius smiled a thin smile that Blackpearl chose not to question.

She was Blackpearl today. It seemed the right thing to do, with her guardian still weak, and exhausted; she could not in good conscience leave the Clarius alone. Besides, she noted, her presence back in the city gave the others the hope they needed, surprisingly few who even questioned why she had been "exiled" in the first place, their happiness was so great.

Florina herself reclined on her throne, the girl laying back peacefully with eyes closed in a position that others might perceive as being nonchalant, but Blackpearl knew better. The Clarius was paying attention to everything around her, _feeling_ it, and probably getting a lot more out of it than anyone else.

"What did Esmeralda want?" the Clarius asked with eyes closed.

"She wanted to become a knight instead of a guardian. It used to be unprecedented, but now that I've done it myself, she figured that it was a good time to push the issue, and she didn't want to take no for an answer." Esmeralda had come to her full of the pride and dedication that had helped to save the Jumi. But still, it was not enough. "I told her she wasn't ready yet. I told her to go back to Geo now that the Jumi are allowed to leave again, learn what she can, and that is how she may someday be as powerful as me."

Florina made a small motion with her hand. "True," she agreed. "We could use more who truly understand magic and Mana. Despite it all, even now so many of the Jumi have forgotten, even though it is for that they even exist." Blackpearl could not have put it better herself.

She chose not to ponder that particular problem, however. She could see Elazul with Ariesa, far below, on one of the terraces that overlooked the valley beyond. It didn't surprise her that they were together. She was not Pearl today, and if she wasn't, where else would he be?

"Do you think he can accept me?" she asked her guardian, turning from the window. The only one she could even trust to make such a comment, and not to mention who "he" was.

Florina did not bother to open her eyes; if anything, she seemed even more asleep than before. But it was an illusion. "Most likely, with time," the Clarius replied. "But the real question would be: do you want him to?"

The formidable Lady Blackpearl found herself absolutely without an answer to that.

"Do you want to rebond?" she asked her guardian suddenly. Of course, the residue of the bond was so powerful that they almost didn't need to; Sandra had shut them off from each other, sparing them both the pain of the bond-snap that would have occurred when she changed to… _Pearl_. The thought of herself that way still made her a little light-headed.

Florina seemed to ponder it. "No. Not yet, I think. Let's see how a few things play out," she finished, eyes going towards the same window that Blackpearl was looking out of. "How is Sappho?" she asked with exaggerated casualness.

Blackpearl gripped the windowsill. "Well," she said cautiously, as if Florina wouldn't have known where she had been spending her nights.

Florina let her contemplate a moment before changing the subject. "Things change, my knight. The Goddess wants to return. She's ready, I can feel it."

"You want me to do something about it." Blackpearl wasn't really asking a question.

Florina _did_ open her eyes then, and sat up, all seriousness. "The Sword, Blackpearl. That's what you left for, to help me." Blackpearl drooped slightly, remembering. "The Sword of Mana… a thing that nearly tore the world apart, but will bring us back together. The basic problem had not changed. We still need it. The _Jumi_ need it. It is the key to the Goddess," Florina concluded.

Blackpearl slumped against the wall. "The thing I spent so long looking for…"

Florina nodded. "Yes, but you did not have _those_ two with you." Blackpearl, of course, knew exactly who she was referring to. "The Sword is the key to break through to the Goddess. If we do not help her now… I am afraid," Florina finished.

Blackpearl remembered then, slim memories of a thousand years ago. "The birth of a new Goddess," she murmured, although not so inaudibly that Florina could not hear. "What we have been waiting for. What we have to achieve, whatever it takes."

"Whatever it takes," agreed Florina. The eyes of the Clarius were sad.

------------------------------------

There was something so refreshing about simply being able to _flirt_.

The Jumi city rang with voices and laughter around them, but oddly enough, the happier the Jumi seemed, the more Ariesa wanted to be _away_. And for once, Elazul seemed to be in agreement, leaving the crowds every chance they got.

He was like she had never seen him before. He was… happy.

And if that wasn't enough, he couldn't keep his hands off her, kissing her every chance he got as if he might never have that chance again. _Did he really believe that?_ she wondered. There was a story he told her, something about her turning to stone, but honestly… she didn't remember. It was all such a blur to her. She was fighting something, and the Jumi were gone, and then they were there… He told her she cried. She probably had, she thought. It seemed a reasonable response under the circumstances, and no harm done, right?

After all, past was past.

Elazul knew this city no better than she did, and Pearl was sometimes there… and sometimes not. That was the way it went, and she didn't want to touch that relationship.

They spent their nights together, while Pearl was… she wasn't sure, somewhere wherever Lucidia slept. Nor was she sure why, after centuries of taboo, did the Jumi seem to take her relationship with Elazul with the proverbial grain of sand. Or perhaps they were too polite to say anything.

Apartments had been found for Elazul, in the Jumi style, carved into the rock itself, no windows, but merely openings in the rock that led in gentle breezes, pleasantly warm even at night this far south. She sighed in contentment every night they lay side by side, feeling the sensation of the air of Etansel and the warmth of the man beside her as they drifted off to sleep together.

Though the nights were wonderful, she also loved the days they spent together exploring a city coming back to life.

That's what found them here today, on one of Etansel's rocky tiers by a waterfall that splashed down, its noise matching the chime of a thousand cores. Like the waterfall of Gato… only not. Similarity, and difference, all rolled into one.

He grabbed her arm, and she slipped away, teasing him. He chased her, pulling her to the ground and kissing her until she could hardly breathe, before finally letting go to hold her as they looked over the valley beyond.

The Empire was out there to the north, and her own home to the east. But none of that mattered now. He propped himself up on his right arm, his left hand reaching over to run its fingers through her hair, elbow brushing her slightly.

His eyes were something else. Lust, in the most tender way, was in there, as much as he tried to hide it. She saw, she knew she did, but he wouldn't say it, nor had he tried to take things further. And if he couldn't, she wouldn't either.

Instead, she squiggled closer, her head laying against his core, his left arm over her. She knew she would do anything to keep this man close to her. Anything at all.

------------------------------------

Rubens could barely contain his joy that Diana had found her hope once again, after losing it so long ago.

He was grateful to Elazul, and the girl, who had helped save them all; but though he wished he could say all the Jumi mattered to him, truly, he cared far more about having the woman he loved with him once again. Her strength was back, her eyes glittering with the passion he had once seen in her. Even watching her, graceful and dignified as always in her role as leader, he couldn't push down the feeling of wanting to throw his arms around her that very second.

But responsibility called. He left the meeting of the Lucidia, the Jumi shuffling out to return to the activities of the day, and embarked on the next chore of the day, letting his core lead him to someone else entirely. _Elazul_.

He was surprised to find the boy not with Ariesa, and naturally not with Pearl – Blackpearl was the one with them this day. Instead, he sat on a rock talking to Esmeralda.

The friendship that was forming was not surprising. _He's clearly besotted with Ariesa_, Rubens thought with a wry smile, remembering the first lush of his feelings for Diana, ages ago. And perhaps not unlike Rubens at the time, Elazul was in all likelihood too young and brash to have much idea of his feelings. Esmeralda, though – she was the youngest next to Elazul himself, and they both had that hope he once remembered in himself, hope that was only now coming back.

In a sense, those were the future, those two.

Elazul heard his approach first, and looked up. "I have a summons for you," Rubens began, forcing a formal tone for the sake of propriety. Elazul raised an eyebrow. "Lady Blackpearl would like to speak with you."

"My guardian finally has some time for me?" Elazul asked, bemused.

"No. Not your guardian." Amusement turned to vague confusion. "This is rather distinctly Lady Blackpearl, as the representative of the Jumi. I would take it rather seriously."

"Should I get Ariesa?" Elazul asked as he rose, suddenly nearly as solemn as Rubens himself. "I think she was taking a nap."

"No," Rubens replied. "Florina will talk to her herself." Elazul looked… puzzled… but merely followed Rubens to the chambers above.

------------------------------------

Blackpearl found herself a bit hesitant to receive Elazul. Yes, she knew that she was his guardian… in a way. Though with luck, he had not figured out the rest. But that belonged to the part of her that had become Pearl, a part that was mostly clear in her head even though it represented far fewer years, yet at the same time separate from her still.

Even encased in her original identity, she rather liked Elazul, but what she needed today required her to suspend those attachments. This was for the Jumi.

The scraping of a door alerted her to his entry, he one of the only permissible to enter the chambers of Lady Blackpearl without announcement. Not that he knew the old traditions anyway. She turned nonchalantly at the sound.

For a moment, she noticed the man as he really was. Tallish, though so closely of a height with she herself that one would be hard-pressed to say who was in fact taller. Rather attractive, she noted objectively, with features that were fine but still masculine, and a nicely shaped body. But more than that, it was his manner that permeated him. Young, proud, passionate, and largely unaware of how many of his actions were driven by pure emotion.

She wished she had that luxury. Even now, as he drove the Jumi inexorably towards the future, she found herself unable to let go of the things that had led her to where she was now.

Lady Blackpearl strode towards the young man, exquisitely conscious of the effect she had on him. Where he might have once shrank back, now he bravely met her eyes, and for a long moment they only stared at each other, both challenge and question.

Finally, she broke the gaze herself, mostly to get down to business. "What do you know of the Lucidia?" she began.

"Little," Elazul admitted, "except that they are very old."

Blackpearl sighed. This was going to take longer that she was prepared for. "Let us start at the beginning, then," she said in a rapid, clipped voice, knowing the explanation was needed, but impatient anyway. "Sappho told me he raised you to the Half-Lucidia, yes?" Elazul nodded. "That is the beginning, to really being Jumi. But it is only a stepping stone for more.

"Being of the Lucidia is not so simple as that," she continued. "It is the content of the person – their emotions, their intelligence, their integrity - and their experience, which, yes, does indicate age in a sense, as you said. It is about having seen, and endured, and understood, and moving forward with that acceptance, a lesson most of the Lucidia learned in the Fairie Wars."

"I thought it was the power of the core," Elazul said

"That is some of the confusion," Blackpearl told him. "Both answers have an element of truth. All these things together – they are all part of the experience of _life_, and life is something of Mana. And after all, that is the core, so to speak, of what the Jumi are." She gestured to her own gem for emphasis. "We are still human, yes, but humans who have been given certain… privileges… in exchange for being the guardian of the pieces of Mana that our bodies contain, the cores that are now so joined to our very souls that there is little difference. In a quite literal way, we are the memories of the old Goddess, preserved for the new. Just like any other creature of Mana – the dragons, the fairies – now we wait for the new Goddess. Only we are closer to Her than either of those."

Elazul was quiet, hanging on her every word. She stopped pacing the room, and stepped closer to him.

"It is something we can never allow ourselves to forget," she said softly. "The Jumi are Mana, Mana is love, and love is power, in a way the world has forgotten. Being of the Lucidia is about knowing these thing, about _becoming_ the essence of what a Jumi is." She paused. "Before we were called 'dirt', some called us angels. That was back when the world understood. And even if they understand no longer… that does not exempt us from the responsibility." She hung her head. "I wonder… if we have been selfish, if we do not owe the Goddess something that we have not been giving."

He looked at her with… sympathy. "Have you ever known Mana? Real Mana?" he suddenly blurted out.

She didn't want to get into that now. "I did," she answered, and looked away quickly. "But that was not the point I was trying to make. I called you here because you are to be raised to the Lucidia."

Elazul looked surprised at that. "There's more," he said, and as his blue eyes bore into hers, she realized, uncomfortably, how well he could in fact read her. She could never be only Lady Blackpearl with him.

"There is," she agreed. "You have been told of the Sword?"

"Florina said a few things about it," Elazul replied cautiously.

"Yes, well," Blackpearl told him, "it becomes more urgent than ever."

"For Ariesa, yes, I know," Elazul said hurriedly.

"That too, but… well, the reasons why make little difference. My point is that the trick is, a Jumi core is the way to find the sword. You cannot force Mana; the Sword will come to you, to your core." Lady Blackpearl paused. "She is part of this as well. You need to bring her with you." She noted they were both uncomfortably skirting around any sort of personal details; but that was another issue altogether, At the moment, it did not matter. "She has been challenged. Now, we will find out if she is ready."

"Will you…" Elazul gulped, then regained some sort of dignity as he remembered his manners. "Will Pearl be coming with us?"

Blackpearl straightened. "I will," she replied; and she saw relief on his face.

------------------------------------

Florina hesitated to summon Ariesa. After all she had done, this veered dangerously close to a direct order, and frankly, she couldn't bring herself to like that part. It really wasn't her style.

Then again, she wondered if any of them had a choice. They were no longer choosing their path; the path was choosing them, and they were at once both freed and caged by it.

The young sprite stepped into her chambers with feigned confidence, but it was obvious to Florina that her mind needed to be set at ease. She reached out gently, her hand lightly touching the other woman's arm. Ariesa stiffened, but slowly relaxed into the gesture. Florina had been prepared to use a touch of healing to soothe her, but it seemed the simple human contact was enough.

"You'd rather be with Elazul right now, I know," she began, the girl's flinch confirming it as if she had not already known. Ariesa did not respond, however, politely waiting for the Clarius to finish. "But there is something more important, and I cannot fail to think it may involve you." She paused for breath. "I am instructing the Jumi to begin the search for the Sword."

"The Sword?" Ariesa burst out. "Why? How?" She stopped, embarrassed. "I mean, I guess that's a good thing, right? But… oh, I feel like there is so much I don't know about it…"

"Then ask questions," Florina suggested.

Ariesa scrunched up her face in contemplation. "Okay… then. Supposing it's not just a legend, which is what I always figured… well, why does it suddenly become a big deal now?"

"It is time, I feel it," Florina replied. "The Tree is almost grown."

"So, what does the Sword have to do with all that, if the Tree is growing anyway?" Ariesa asked doubtfully.

"If only things were so simple," Florina told her, feeling a hint of worry. "The Goddess will wake no matter what we do. But… she will not be true without it, that is not all there is to it. I do not know how to explain it more clearly than that," she concluded. "But the tree will come to the Sword, new Mana to old."

Ariesa remained quiet for a long moment, ingesting it all. "So," she finally said. "It is time to move on?"

Florina nodded gravely. "Yes. It takes Mana to find the Sword, and that's where you come in."

"I don't have any Mana," protested Ariesa.

"Not in a literal sense, no," Florina agreed. "But you are making an oversimplified judgment. The world has made that mistake for too long, thinking that Mana superficially is all that the Goddess is. It is created by her… and it creates her. Most find the Mana half easier to reach for, and then when they grab it, they find it lacking. Worse still… what has happened over the last millennium has been… disruptive, to say the least… to the balance of the Goddess and her Mana. Do you understand?"

"A little bit," admitted Ariesa.

Florina smiled uncritically. "Well, as far as you are concerned, I can make it simpler. For you, for your heritage…" The Clarius paused and drifted off, not wanting to say the rest. "Simply being human is enough. Everything alive is a part of the Goddess, and that connection to the Goddess is the only hope."

Ariesa gulped. "So what do you want me to do?"

"I did tell you, do you remember? In Geo?"

"Would you remind me?" Ariesa asked politely.

"I sent you here to find answers, answers that would lead you to the Sanctuary of Mana." The Clarius glanced out the window. "The Jumi have returned. That is practically an answer in and of itself, and one more than I could have dreamed of. The race, together again." She sighed. "So if they are the answer, what was the question?"

"I think I know," Ariesa said softly.

Florina looked at her pointedly. "You've had dreams, haven't you?"

Ariesa gaped openly, and Florina continued. "Dreams are only reality through a filter… no matter where they begin, there is a role of the self. Dreams change when reality changes. They are not just a cage. You can shape it. Do you understand what I am saying?'

This time, Ariesa only nodded, and a gesture of Florina allowed her to leave, the girl even more shaken than before… and the chambers of the Clarius were silent once again.

Florina reclined on her throne, grateful for the solitude. She had wanted to let Ariesa know her heritage was powerful; there was the blood of, well, several, in her, that was clear. But there were things she didn't want to tell. _Maybe_, she wondered, _she wasn't supposed to._

She had felt Blackpearl return to being Pearl a short while before Ariesa had arrived; and as much as she cared for her knight, she was relieved that meant she would be left completely alone. These days, she had little need for a knight.

Her greatest sorrows were all inside, anyway.

_She had entered the Mekiv caverns with him, gripping the stone that she knew as to become part of her being. The caverns seemed to pull at the core in her hand, resonating with it, welcoming it._

"_Why do we have to come here, Airess Halloway?" he asked her teasingly. "I thought it was just the stone got stuck into your skin, or whatever."_

_He had told her he was a prince of Rolante. He might have been; the country was gone. It did not matter; he was what he was to her, and she cared terribly for him, as he did for her._

"_It's not so simple," she told him. "Um… it's sort of like the Goddess has to agree to it."_

"_I thought the Goddess was still growing?" he asked her._

"_No, the _old_ Goddess," she told him. "She's the one who recognizes Jumi."_

"_How does she do that when she's dead?" he asked, perplexed._

_Airess looked down at the stone in her hands. It was the softest color of green, and in the semi-darkness it glowed softly in time with the caverns of Mekiv. _They're both alive, _she realized, the stone in her hand and the stone of the caves. Even the ancient Goddess herself, in a way that transcended time. But she did not tell him all these things._

"_It's because there was a Mana Stone here before," she said simply, and he seemed to accept it._

_He looked around in wonder. "They say these caverns were created by that Stone."_

"_And that is why I am here. To create something new." Mekiv was life. She had understood that, even back then._

_And ever since that day, so many centuries ago, she had hoped for that life to return, even as the world and the Jumi were destroyed around her. _That time has almost come, _Florina realized abruptly, before returning to her memories once again._

_Her thoughts on that day had not been nearly so complex. She was younger then, making a decision – or two – that went perhaps beyond her years, but she felt confident in her choices. She had made up her mind, and she knew her direction was the right way to go._

_And now she found herself trembling with anticipation at last._

_He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close but still leaving just enough room between them, as she grasped the core and pressed it below her throat resolutely. She had braced herself, having heard it was painful, but… it... _wasn't_._

_It was nothing short of bliss, and she gasped despite herself with the pleasure of it. The core, the Goddess, reached for her gently, joining harmoniously with her. She felt his arms catch her as she nearly tumbled to the ground, euphoria overtaking her, at once unexpected and familiar._

_The moment drew out, for how long, she could not say, until finally delirium faded, to leave reality in its place. She let go of the feeling with reluctance, looking down at the gem that now resided in her chest, feeling its gentle pulsations timing out of phase with, but still somehow complementary to, her all-too-human heart._

_He was still there. His arms were still around her. And he was still looking at her with the same affection he always had._

_She was only thirteen, but she knew already what she wanted. Even now, she showed barely a trace of age past that; obviously a woman, but forever on that border of childhood as well, in a way that made many assume there was less to her than there really was._

_But age was not the only thing that defined oneself, and she was far from anything that could be called a child. And it was not childish feelings that she felt now._

_She pulled him to her, and his eyes widened in surprise… but he got over it quickly enough. Tentatively, he reached for the core that was now a part of her… and she went practically out of her head with desire._

_And for the second time that day, she expected pain, but found nothing but pleasure._

------------------------------------

_The child was born nine months later._

_It wasn't what Airess had been expecting, but things were what they were. He was with her, of course, as she cuddled her new daughter, the daughter that had been created in Mekiv. She looked at the gurgling baby, the first grandchild of Amalette and Lasdanac, sad to know what would happen next._

_Standing solemnly against the wall was her twin brother Julio, he back from Geo for the occasion, watching, waiting. Ready to protect his sister to the death, if he had to; but there was nothing he could do here but to be there with her. He could not protect her from herself._

"_You don't have to…" he told her._

_She steeled herself. This was her pain, and it was hers to endure, accept and allow to become a part of her. "No," she told him. "I do."_

_It didn't make it easier; but she knew. That was the secret of Mana – life was precious, and limited. And she would be grateful for what she had experienced. She would cry, yes – she knew she would never stop crying – but she would know._

"_I am a Jumi now," she told him. That was done, and there was no going back. "You must take her instead."_

_He nodded in understanding. To keep the child herself… to watch her daughter grow, age and die… it was more than she could bear. Or worse… to live, she persecuted at every end as the hunting for the Jumi increased. Better to let ago… and perhaps one day, meet once again, if the Goddess willed it._

"_Is there a name you want?" he asked her._

_Airess pondered. "She should have mine," she finally said. "I am giving it up for a Jumi name soon enough, before I go look for the others. They say the Jumi are gathering, in a city no one else can find."_

"_Where was your name from?" he asked her._

"_I was named for Aeris. Mekiv's mother. My ancestor," she filled in for him. "The name meant 'sky' in the old elven language."_

_He smiled, and pondered. "She is Rolantic as well… perhaps a name in the Rolantic style?"_

"_How do you mean?" she asked, falling against the pillows exhausted._

_His grin grew wide. "Airessa," he said. "Her name is Airessa."_

------------------------------------

It was a cold, rainy night when Ariesa stumbled back into Domina.

There was no question of Ariesa making it home that night; neither Elazul or Pearl would hear of her trudging it through the cold and wet. Instead, they stumbled together through the door of the Jumis' little house, clothes dripping, tired and hungry.

"Brrr," Ariesa shivered. This far south, the world was somewhat seasonless, but still… there was a chill in the air that she just couldn't shake. "I'm freezing!"

"Get out of those wet clothes, then," Elazul said matter-of-factly.

She dropped her coat, which rapidly began to pool water on the floor. Elazul looked down with surprising primness. "The rug's getting wet," he grumped.

"That's what water _does_," Ariesa replied acidly.

"Then take off the rest, and put them somewhere," he told her petulantly. He reached around her from behind, grasping the dress's neckline strap as if to pull it off her shoulder, then suddenly… froze.

Her clothes were wet and cold, but she was suddenly very conscious of Elazul's warm body… _very_ near hers. Nor had he failed to notice. His left arm was wrapped around her chest, and he unthinkingly pulled her even tighter. She gasped, matching his heavy breathing in her ear, unsure of what to do next… and for a long moment, neither moved, tensed against each other.

It was a piercing chime that finally broke the moment. "What the hell is that?" Elazul shouted.

"That's our doorbell, Elazul!" Pearl called from the kitchen. "Do you want me to get it?"

"I'll get it," Elazul harrumphed, releasing Ariesa abruptly. Irritated, she followed him to the front door, which he practically threw open.

"What?" he demanded. Ariesa peeked over his shoulder to see a giant… canary… in the doorway. Miss Yuka, from the inn across the street.

The bird held an umbrella in one hand, and a basket in the other. "This is from Thoma," she clucked. "He saw you coming into town, and figured you were probably hungry after traveling."

Ariesa stepped forward. "We'll take it," she said definitively. Elazul shrugged. "How is he paying for all this?" she wondered.

"Hope he's not putting it on my tab," grumbled Elazul.

"He doesn't have to. Empire gold is worth a lot," said the canary. Elazul nodded, and with a surprisingly polite "good night", shut the door once again.

Ariesa meandered into the kitchen, and Pearl wordlessly joined her in setting out their surprise feast. "That inn's not cheap. I'll go over tomorrow and see if he wants to stay over here, especially if we're not going to use the house for a bit," offered Elazul.

"That would be nice," Ariesa said absentmindedly, and Pearl only nodded.

In any case, they - and their stomachs - were grateful. All were wound up, though, and no one wanted to sleep; the threesome found themselves staying up late together, until, in the wee hours of the morning, the storm finally began to trickle off.

The sky was dark, but the beating of the rain on the roof had ceased. Still, Ariesa noted with a glance, it looked like there were still heavy clouds outside. "Is this the eye of the storm?" Ariesa asked. "Is it all done?"

"Somehow, I doubt it," said Elazul dryly.

"Well, at least we can enjoy it for the moment," said Pearl. Ariesa's eyelids began to droop, and she remembered little more of the conversation, only knowing that at some point Elazul neatly steered her to the bed they were now used to sharing, and she fell into pleasurably dreamless sleep.

Sure enough, the next day dawned clear, and Ariesa jumped out of bed eagerly. It was barely a couple of hours later that she found herself traveling back up the lane to her familiar house once again.

The twins came tearing up to her, talking all over one another in their childish excitement, and it couldn't help but make Ariesa laugh with pleasure. "I'm back," she told them. "I'm back!"

They squeezed her tightly, with the same enthusiasm they had the first day she met them, only letting go reluctantly as she tried to extract them from her neck. "What? Did you think I wouldn't be?" she teased.

Neither twin spoke; Lisa just blushed a little, and Bud looked down into the dirt. Ariesa suddenly felt extremely guilty.

"Imagination fills us with love!" the sproutling chirped, emerging from the side of the house. "We're all here because we like staying here!" Ariesa gave it an absolutely pointless dirty look, and it descended into mindless, incomprehensible chattering.

"Well, let's get inside," she said, in a more hushed tone. "We have a few things to talk about."

The twins followed her somberly into the house, and she gave a hasty summary of what had happened. Mostly only the good parts. No need to make them worry more than they needed to.

"So the Jumi are back?" Lisa asked breathily.

"Yes!" Bud shouted, spontaneously high-fiving a confused Pearl.

"It's not so easy," Ariesa chided them. "There's still a lot more that we need to do." She shared a knowing glance with the Jumi.

"You're looking for the Goddess," Lisa interjected, and Ariesa looked at her in surprise. "What? It's not that hard to figure out, right?"

"I suppose not," Ariesa admitted, "But it is no place for the two of you." She studiously ignored their protests. "I think I'm going to have the two of you pay a visit to Vadise," she told them thoughtfully.

"All by ourselves?" Bud said excitedly.

"I'll ask Thoma to go with you. He can probably handle anything the two of you can't." Lisa smiled shyly at that, and Ariesa filed that away in the back of her head to deal with later.

"What about you?" Bud asked.

"Well, from what Florina said, the Jumi cores are the key…" Ariesa trailed off.

"So I guess we're just supposed to follow where… I guess where Elazul and I think we should go…" Pearl suggested hesitantly.

"That doesn't sound like a very well-thought out plan," Lisa noted matter-of-factly.

"I think we should go to Gato," interjected Elazul, and Ariesa looked towards him. "We haven't seen Daena in a while, after all."

"Or Escad," Ariesa added.

"Or Escad," Elazul admitted grudgingly. "In any case… Gato has information the rest of the world doesn't."

"I suppose," Pearl said blankly. "It's not like we have any better ideas here."

------------------------------------

Esmeralda adjusted her scarf carefully, the wind whistling past her ear. She and her sisters had been born in the Empire city of Maia, and lived for decades in the desert city of Geo. The cold that blazed outside Lorimar was new for her.

Rubens seemed to be handling it no better than she did, but Diana accepted it easily. This was her homeland, after all.

It was a small group of Jumi that had made the trip out here, and Esmeralda truly had no idea what they expected to find in the frozen wastelands north of the city. Ostensibly, though, she was here to get some sort of training from Rubens, an idea the man had that Blackpearl had grudgingly agreed to. She didn't know why Blackpearl agreed with Rubens so easily, but she wasn't about to give up the chance she had been waiting for.

Still, she found it somewhat disconcerting when Diana, the leader of the Jumi, summoned her to her room at the inn. She entered, to find not only Diana but several of the other Lucidia as well, and politely she sat, inclining her head forward in what was the traditional greeting of one guardian to a higher.

"Esmeralda," Diana began formally, Rubens standing at attention by her chair, "guardian of the Half-Lucidia." Esmeralda shuffled slightly at the formal address. "The Clarius sent us here to find whatever we could of the Sword of Mana, and the Goddess, in this land that was once the focus of so much power. But now… we think perhaps this is not the place for you."

"You're sending me back to Etansel?" Esmeralda asked incredulously.

"Not at all," Diana replied. "We have… another task for you. I was concerned that you might not be qualified, but Rubens assures me you are ready." Esmeralda shot a surprised glance at the ruby Knight, and he only offered her a small smile of encouragement. It was enough. "I am sending you as the ambassador to the dragons."

"Why?" Esmeralda asked before she could stop herself.

"Because in our search, we have uncovered some… disturbing… information." Her eyes locked with Esmeralda. "About the Empire. It seems we will not be alone in this endeavor. We will need the help of the dragons."

"I understand, Mistress," Esmeralda replied politely.

"Then Rubens will see you on your way." Diana looked at her now with a little more affection, and perhaps pride as well. "Take care, my child."

It was little preparation, but it was all she had, and she knew she wouldn't have said no, even if she could.

It wasn't an easy trip, even crossing the southern regions of the snowfields, and Esmeralda doubted herself and her ability more than once as she made her way east. It was some days later when she stumbled into temperate regions once again, rapidly giving away to a forest in the full bloom of summer; and though she worried she might be lost, somehow she followed the path as if by instinct.

Voices drifted towards her. "Try it without the instruments," intoned a deep, melodic voice.

"Huh?" came another, male and childlike. "But that's the way we've always done it! We were taught it was the only way!"

"It was, perhaps, but will it always be so?" the first voice returned, and the path opened into a peaceful glade, Esmeralda realizing with a start that the voice belonged to a dragon.

She gasped as she caught her first glimpse of the voice's owner. An enormous, elegant, white furred creature, who turned her head at the new arrival; and Esmeralda realized with a start that the dragon had only one eye. But even the single eye held a wisdom greater than humans could over hope for.

Somehow, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed others accompanying the magnificent creature. A beast-woman crouched in front of the dragon, wielding a set of wicked looking knives and poised to strike. A young Forcenan man, a younger elven boy, and…

"_Lisa_?!?" she asked, blinking in surprise.

"Esmeralda!" Lisa shouted, running up to her to give her a hug that took Esmeralda back. "So it's true! The Jumi have returned!"

"We have," Esmeralda said warmly, returning the embrace. "You can thank Ariesa for that."

"Sierra, at ease, she is a Jumi," the dragon said, her voice resounding across the clearing; and the beast-woman straightened, sheathing her weapons almost reluctantly.

"Come meet everyone!" Lisa said, laughing, tugging at Esmeralda's hand. "This is my friend Thoma - " she gestured to the young man, and "this is my brother Bud."

"I see the resemblance," Esmeralda said politely. "You seem like a nice kid, Bud."

Possibly the wrong thing to say, she realized, as he straightened with a bit of a huff. "I'm not a kid," he told her. "I'm just as tall as you."

He was right, she realized. But then again, she wasn't so terribly tall herself. Then she caught way she was looking at her… She might have giggled, if it wouldn't impugn his newly forming masculinity. But she knew how it looked when a guy was checking her out, and he wasn't exactly slick about it.

"Jumi," the dragon finally interrupted. "I am Vadise. Who are you, and what brings you here?" she asked gently.

Esmeralda took a deep breath. "I come on the orders of Diana, leader of the Jumi," she said, now serious. "Diana is worried… that the Empire may be looking for the same thing we are."

"The sword?" Vadise's voice was a whip.

"It seems they have not given up yet, my liege," Sierra observed. "Their Emperor drives them still." Her tone switched to a bit sarcastic. "As if killing him twice wasn't good enough," she finished dryly.

Vadise dipped her head, and shut her one blue eye, thinking. "We have reached this point sooner than I thought, Sierra. I felt it, yes, but I was not sure." Her eye snapped open. "Barriers are breaking, faster than even I suspected. You know where you have to go, of course, and you should bring the children back with you. But I think it is time I leave my forest myself."

"Vadise…?" Sierra asked quizzically. "Are you sure? You belong here."

"I did," Vadise told her. "In the past. But now, I must join the future as well."

She turned to Esmeralda once again. "Thank you for coming, Jumi Knight."

"Guardian," Esmeralda corrected awkwardly.

"So they tell you," Vadise said mildly, "but many things are changing, and perhaps I see something different. In any case, return to your mistress, and tell her I will be there when I need to be."

------------------------------------

Ariesa stepped around the sproutling that had come out of nowhere, it seemed, purely to block her path on the way up to the main gate of Gato. No need, though; she had already been spotted. Daena ran out of the city's streets to throw her arms around Ariesa.

"It's been so long!" she exclaimed. "You'll have to tell me what's been going on," she said in a more even tone of voice, sneaking a suggestive glance at Elazul.

"Not that much," Ariesa said dryly, rolling her eyes in Elazul's direction. Daena's quick flick of eyebrow showed she understood exactly what Ariesa meant. "Oh yeah, except we're supposed to be looking for the Sword of Mana, and we have no idea how to find it. The Mana in the Jumi cores is supposed to lead us to it, but so far, we don't know where to start."

"In the spiritual world, you'll find the big tree!" chirped the sproutling. "We're all one plant in that dimension. If the plants join the big tree in the spiritual dimension, that big tree will revive in this world too!"

As much as Ariesa wanted to ignore the thing, she found both herself and Daena staring at it in shock, wondering if… maybe they weren't saying something important after all.

"We were hoping you could give us some ideas," added Elazul, striding up to them with Pearl only a short ways behind.

Daena fingered her whiskers thoughtfully. "Mana, you say?" she contemplated. "Well… Not like we have the Mana the Jumi do, but I suppose the fairies might know a few things."

She led them to the waterfall, and for long moments they stared into the spilling stream. Ariesa shifted impatiently from one foot to another, sneaking glances at Daena on her one side, and Elazul on the other, Pearl just beyond. Elazul, in particular, stared straight ahead, eyes bluer than the water boring into the pool as if he could will some answers into existence.

When she first saw it, she was certain that it was simply an effect of staring for so long, but even as she shook her head to clear it, it was still there. The gaggle of lights she had glimpsed slowly but surely resolved themselves into… fairies.

"Greetings," one said. "I am Ehrlang." Pearl smiled, and Elazul nodded his head reverently, as Ariesa only stared in surprise.

"You're showing yourselves to us," Daena observed.

"Maybe," Ehrlang replied. "and maybe not." Ariesa just rolled her eyes. "But you have questions in any case, yes?"

Daena drew a deep breath. "What can you tell us about finding the Sword of Mana?"

The fairy gasped, and an expression of pain, and wonder, crept across her face. "The Sword… ?" she asked. "Really? It is time?"

"It is," confirmed Daena.

"We have hoped… but we could not find our way to it ourselves," Ehrlang told them.

"Then give them a direction, Ehrlang," chided another.

Ehrlang looked slightly scolded, but took a deep breath. "Jumi, you cannot find an answer in your core?"

"We've tried," Elazul said, "Pearl and I both…" Pearl nodded in agreement. "But we can't seem to get a clear idea."

"Really?" Ehrlang seemed surprised. "But who is with you?" She looked at Ariesa. Elazul only turned, and squeezed her hand.

"Um… I'm Ariesa," she replied.

"So, then," suggested Ehrlang. "If the Jumi have no better ideas, where would you like to go? Perhaps if you pick the general direction, then let the Jumi choose the path?"

Ariesa closed her eyes. _You can change your dreams_, Florina had told her, and found herself oddly thinking of that dream she had so long ago. It pulled her once again.

"Lorant," she finally said. "I want to go to Lorant." Elazul looked at her in surprise, but Pearl nodded slowly.

"Then let Mana guide your way," Ehrlang said, and vanished.

------------------------------------

The goodbyes had been quick. Daena had wished she might have visited with Ariesa a little longer, but the tension was palatable, and it carried over to Daena as well. Now was not the time.

She had things to worry about herself, anyway. Ariesa had her path to follow; and Daena had her own. The Temple was to be reopened soon enough, its two torches casting their light once again to shine on Gato and take it into the future. Only, she had no idea where Gato was supposed to go, or how it was going to get there. It was meant to be the city of the Goddess… but there was no Goddess.

Not yet, anyway.

She knelt solemnly by the pool for some minutes, brooding over it all. The Sword of Mana. Even the records left in Gato were spotty and highly theoretical – about what it was, what it did, and most obscure of all was what it might be needed for now. Yet Daena knew it was the truth, nevertheless.

Another figure approached, footsteps sauntering over to her. Daena did not turn. "You didn't say hello to them," she accused.

"I didn't want to bother," Escad told her, and Daena lifted her head. For some reason, he had his sword out, and was fingering its shiny silver blade studiously.

"The fairies wouldn't come out for long," she said a touch accusingly.

"They…" Escad gulped slightly. "They didn't want to come out again. They already said what they wanted to say for today."

"So why didn't you _tell_ Ariesa?" she accused.

Escad swiveled his eyes on her, lowering his sword to the ground. "It was nothing they wanted to hear. Nothing that would help them, or bring them hope," he said solemnly. "Better to let them stay in their cage of dreams a little longer.

"Whatever do you mean?" Daena asked.

Escad looked far over the valley. "The truth of Mana, as I'm sure you have realized by now, Daena - " a hint of condescension crept into his voice, but oddly turned quickly to fear - "is that things are not always so easy. Death will happen before life will return. Did you really want me to tell them that?"

Daena could only shrug awkwardly, and looked back into the pool, gazing studiously at her own face reflected back.

------------------------------------

Ariesa took the fairies at their word, and that was how she found herself once again trudging east over the dry and dusty Luon Highway, letting the Jumi lead. Sometimes Elazul's core seemed to be the one which pulled them; sometimes it was Pearl's. It was all the same to her, as long as they got _somewhere_.

As they passed the fork that turned down to Ariesa Canyon, part of her wanted to turn, to visit Gaeus and maybe get some new answers; but oddly, it was Elazul who put his hand on her arm, holding her back. "I think the Wisdoms can't help us this time," he told her. "I think we're on our own."

It gave her a bit of a chill, but somehow, Ariesa knew he was right. _The Wisdoms only know so much,_ she realized with a start, and as much as she wished she could run to them, find someone who would give her the answers… deep down, she knew it was too late. Too much had happened; she was no longer fumbling down a straight and narrow path before her, she was creating, choosing her own way, from a blank and empty slate before her.

But she was not doing it alone, and that gave her courage.

She smiled, and grasped for Elazul's left hand. He looked at her in surprise. "What?" he asked gently.

Ariesa only smiled, and shook her head.

As they headed further and further into the mountains, she found her fear dissipating and her confidence growing, until finally the sun fell below the horizon behind them. As they settled in for the night, with the darkness doubt and worry found her once again.

She had no idea what time it was, only that it was late. She stared blankly above her, the man lying close to her no less awake than she herself was. Finding herself unable to drift off into the world of dreams… she talked about them instead.

"What do you want now?" she asked him softly. "Is it the same as before? I mean, the Jumi are back, that's what you wanted, right?"

Elazul sighed, his breath warm against her face. "I thought that was all, but now I don't know," he told her. "In a way, it almost feels like a loss, you know? And Pearl, too… I used to think we wanted the same things, but then some things started to change… Do our goals conflict? Now what do I do?" He looked at Ariesa in a very odd way as he said that. "We're both going through some of the same things, but maybe not for the same reasons or purpose. We can't talk about it like we used to. She needs… to break free of her memories… and I still am trying to find mine."

He wiggled even closer to her as he finished speaking, clinging to her as if she was his lifeline, and she wondered if she could handle the pressure. She lay there for a moment with his arm across her, his head very close to hers, contemplating. "What about you?" he finally asked. "What are _your_ dreams?"

_Dreams_. Such a difficult concept. _How many of them had she found_, she wondered, letting Elazul snuggle closer to her. Did she really even know what she wanted?

"I want…" she began, and though she had no answer, it was not because there was nothing to fill the space, as there might have been so many months before. Instead, she found a torrent of ideas, images, memories, feelings, all clamoring to take a spot that had once seemed empty and dry. She cringed slightly, and Elazul did not fail to notice, pulling her to him a little more tightly. For a long moment, there was no sound other than the duo of their breaths.

"I want _everything_," she finally said. "How do I decide what I want first?"

"Dreams," Elazul murmured in her ear. "They tempt up, they lead us, but sometimes we just end up stuck in them. Instead of living. You know what I mean?"

She did. It was the part where you were so lost either in acknowledging yesterday and anticipating tomorrow, that you lost your awareness of today. There were too many things she wanted still; it seemed the more she found, the more she desired, and paradoxically it left her both fuller and emptier before, with so many things left to find.

_Maybe I've found one_, she thought, as he leaned over to kiss her.

------------------------------------

The Lorant Tableland was there waiting for them the next morning, the branch of the highway dead-ending there. And Ariesa still had no idea where to go.

She shivered slightly in a way that was not from the wind, finding herself once again at the place where she herself had been so many months ago. It was the same; she, on the other hand, was not, in a way that needed more than the passage of time to account for it. It had been such a different person that had come there before, that Ariesa scarcely recognized herself. Innocence had given way to experience, to courage, to pain, to guilt, even that being finally lost, but leaving her pulled in every direction nonetheless.

She stood there, looking over the edge of the cliff at the mountains stretching beyond, here so far out that there was no sign of civilization in sight. A blank slate, in a way, but what was there to fill it?

She was here, unsure of what she was supposed to find, and unable to go no further. The wind whipped through her hair, it trying to make a tangled mess and being barely restrained by her hair-sticks. "No luck," she bemoaned.

Pearl gazed off towards the west, towards where they had come from, looking once again as confused as when Ariesa had first met her. Elazul peered northwest, looking at what, she could not say.

"I thought…" Ariesa began, trailing off. "I thought there would be something we could find here."

"So did I," Elazul replied, not turning to look at her.

_The dream_. It had not returned in all this time, and it wouldn't come back here, either. She knelt, brushing fingertips idly on the ground, and though she was sure she had imagined it, she felt… a _jolt_ was the best way she could have described it. Then, it was gone, as quick as it began. Startled, she looked up, to see that neither of the Jumi had flinched. That pretty much settled it for her – if it was anything of Mana, they would have both noticed, this close.

Yes, definitely her imagination.

"We should go home," Pearl said, still looking in that very direction.

"Home?" Elazul questioned. "What's there to find there?"

Ariesa straightened, thinking she knew what Pearl was talking about. "Perhaps nothing," she told him, "but maybe to reach the end, we have to start from the beginning again."

------------------------------------

_The end is the beginning_, Ariesa thought, as they reentered Domina once again, turning down the lane out of town towards her own home. Or was it the other way around?

Though by the time she stumbled over her own threshold, she was too tired, emotionally and physically, to really even care.

Word of their return had advanced ahead of them. The twins had a meal ready for them, which the exhausted trio ate almost without taste, tiredness competing with hunger. They stumbled upstairs, and Pearl discreetly curled up on the bench under the window, neatly leaving the bed remaining for the two who were not quite lovers yet. Ariesa offered to let the two Jumi share her bed, but Pearl just laughed her off. "There's no _way _you'll fit on that bench, Ariesa, you're too tall," she said, setting about laying out blankets for herself.

Pearl fell asleep quickly enough, but despite their exhaustion, Ariesa and Elazul both found themselves unable to sleep. Worries crept in to keep them awake in the way that worries often did.

"Do you really think it can be found?" Ariesa began. She had desire, yes, and she thought that would be enough, but now it was competing with disillusionment.

Elazul did not answer at first. "I don't know," he finally said, staring at the ceiling above her bed, one of the parts of her house that was the tree itself.

Tiredness began to overtake conversation, and she wriggled closer to him, he throwing left arm over her in a gesture now nearly automatic. Pearl's rhythmic breathing showed she herself was fast asleep. Ariesa instinctively reached for his core, Elazul flinching slightly as her fingertips brushed it before settling into her touch, and from there into sleep.

------------------------------------

She was in the Mekiv caverns, once again.

Perhaps it was because she had been close to Elazul as she fell asleep… this was where it all began, hadn't it? Mekiv, the living caverns, representing the creation of so many things. Including, perhaps, the two of them.

It had the feeling of that dream so long ago, long enough that she had nearly forgotten that woman's voice calling to her, begging her to remember something she had never known to forget, the emotions threatening to overwhelm her with their intensity.

Then, it had terrified her, but now maybe, just maybe, she felt up to the challenge. Still, the memory weighed on her, and she caught herself imagining the voice once again, now whispering through the caverns.

_Remember me…_

"Did you call me here?" she shouted to the voice, hearing her own voice come out in an odd way, somewhat sharp and unreal, but at the same time crystal clear in its intonation, losing the edges of roughness that sometimes crept into ordinary speech.

She wished she had Elazul with her now, but she forced herself to move forward. Actually, there was little force in it; in that dream-way, she found herself moving, some of her own volition, some of it slowly, gently, carrying her forward. Grayed-out caverns surrounded her, nothing like the living, breathing thing that she knew as the Mekiv Caverns. This was a desolate, hollow shell, devoid of Mana, of life.

Was this what she feared for the world?

There was no answer from the voice that seemed to come out of the stones themselves, but of all things… a _sproutling_ skittered into the cavern, its oddly wobbling walk heading towards her.

"I'm a sproutling!" it said, and part of Ariesa wanted to roll her eyes despite it all. "I need to heal the Mana Tree!" It had a shade of something sinister.

"The Mana Tree? Heal it?" she asked carefully.

"The tree…" it drifted off. "A monster, something evil…" it began to contort, leaves turning brown then black, and rotting off as she watched in horror. "The evil is in MEEE…" it screeched, a grating, squealing sound that made her cover her ears instinctively, even as the word ended the sound still scraping on her mind.

Without warning, it collapsed and disappeared in the motes of sparkles. The end of that voice trailed off, and she shivered as the echo slowly drifted through the caverns, that final wail of pain leaving the memory, the _feeling_ of that pain as well.

_This was not like those first dreams any longer. This was far more vivid_, she began to realize as she looked around her at the caverns of Mekiv in sharp clarity. She hoped this truly was a dream, and that she was not trapped here.

She touched the walls, involuntarily shrinking back as her fingers touched cold, clean water. She had expected to feel nothing, but that sharp chill proved her wrong. And then she realized the truth of it all.

It _was_ a dream. It was a dream waiting to become real.

The voice seemed to whisper once again, its words now incomprehensible but the meaning clear, a sense of heightened urgency as it begged her to move forward still. She did, and her mind moved forward as well, drifting through thoughts of every one who had come into her life since that day, and what they had brought to her.

_Bud and Lisa_. She stepped through an opening into the next cavern. She had once thought them so young, but like all young things, they grew and reached for more. Perhaps not unlike the Mana Tree itself. _Thoma_. Someone from the other side, according to what she had been taught, but now questioning the very things his life had been built upon. _Daena_. She neatly skirted a puddle of water on the cave's floor, catching a sliver of her own reflection in it. Her best girlfriend, someone young as she was but starting to see more than she wanted, who suffered, endured, and thrived as she herself had.

The walls seemed to pulse in time with her steps.

_Escad. _She knew little of him, but enough to know there was reasons to how he had gotten where he was today, and reasons why he would be wherever he would be tomorrow. Her eyes drifted over the edges of the rock walls, in places sharp and jagged, in other spots worn smooth by centuries of water running over it with eternal sameness. _Larc_. A plan for good that went wrong, leading to someone more trapped than she could ever imagine, undermining forever for her the idea that intention was all that mattered.

The quiet seemed at first to seep into her bones, until she realized there was never true silence. Not anywhere they was life. The trickles of water gurgled rhythmically with her breaths, both echoing gently through the cavern she was in, and beyond, as she stepped forward into yet another room.

The air here almost seemed warmer – no, not warmer, not temperature, maybe more – alive? _Sierra. _Someone who could be so hard, and so soft, the legacy of years of loss and disappointment that became part of oneself, for better or for worse. Not unlike one more she could think of, one who had seen, done, felt more than she herself could ever imagine. _Pearl_. Or Blackpearl; to Ariesa, they were one and the same in her head, merging for her easily, even though another still struggled with the idea.

And it was that last person who was in the forefront of her mind. She hated to admit to it, hated to choose, but the simple truth was, he mattered most of all to her, in a way she couldn't explain, hadn't thought possible, and suddenly she stopped, as if he himself had been there to grab her.

_Elazul_. This place would always remind her of him. Perhaps that was why her mind had dreamed herself back here? The thought made her head practically spin, and she shoved it down, realizing she was using it to avoid moving. And that was never what he would want for her.

With a supreme amount of effort, she put one foot in front of the other. _Step_. She forced herself to concentrate on that simple motion. _Step. Step. Step_.

The warmth might not have been from the air, but it wrapped around her nonetheless, as if Mekiv itself was comforting her. _Step_. Passion for life, and love, filling her, emerging out of nothing into something. _Step_. Love, the force which drove Mana, drove the Goddess herself…

_She loved him_. The simple phrase came up so quickly that she almost missed it, but once it hit her, it grabbed on, and wouldn't let go.

_Step_. She loved him. _Step_. She _loved_ him. _Step_. She loved _him_…

Voices seemed to whisper through the caverns, layered on top of each other through each was impossible to make out, forming a dull cacophony just at the edge of understanding. But it was that simple phrase in her head that she heard above them all, over and over again; perhaps it was the only one she wanted to hear. She wandered as if by instinct, half dream-like herself, until with a start, she realized she was meant to wander no further. The room she was in… was a dead end. Why?

She froze, standing there for a long moment, and heard an odd rustling. She whirled as a figure stepped out of the shadows.

She looked for who would greet her here, and she saw… herself.

Or not. The eyes had more wisdom, the clothing more elegant… but she couldn't shake the feeling she was looking in a mirror. Some difference in features, yes, and the woman she looked upon had eyes of green, not her own brown, but still… there was a kinship she could not explain.

"Who are you? Did you call me here?" she challenged the golden-haired woman. "Are you the Goddess?"

"I am no Goddess," the woman replied. The voice was neither high nor low, dignified, young still but with the soft tones of one who had no anger, nothing to regret. "Consider me someone who wished to see you, as you wished to see me. I am your memory."

The woman looked around the caverns, and they seemed to reflect the green of her dress in response, the gray fading ever so subtly. "So much that began here… and so much that has changed," she murmured as Ariesa looked on bewildered.

"You are the queen Blackpearl told me about," Ariesa realized breathily. _My ancestor_, she realized with a start.

The other woman showed her first sign of surprise. "How… how did you know?" she asked with trepidation. "I knew… I had to come here, but I didn't know if I should tell you more than I had to…"

"I was told something…" Ariesa replied, no less awkward. A thought occurred to her as well. "Did you know Lady Blackpearl?"

"Who?" the queen replied.

"A tall woman with silvery blond hair, dressed in gray silks…" The stranger looked thoughtful at that for a long moment, but finally, no answer seemed to cross her face. "I know no Blackpearl," she said, almost sad.

Sympathy welled, as Ariesa realized this was someone who had seen and done plenty herself. And probably had a few answers because of it. "Did I imagine myself here then?" she asked softly. "Is it all my dreams? Or is this real?"

"Yes, and no," the other woman replied, all of her dignity now returned. "Depending on how you see it. As far as humans are concerned, the two seem different; but even being in opposition is a sort of harmony, in a way? Why do you have to pick one or the other?"

Ariesa found herself absolutely wordless with the novelty of the thought. Not having to choose… two things that clashed instead making each other stronger… she shook her head in confusion, returning to the conversation at hand. "Then, what about you?" she asked.

"I am here with… permission… in a way," she replied. "Imagination can not only create, it can twist, bend, reshape and reform… even the structure of time itself. To a point. I can reach out from where I am to where you are, but I cannot be with you; it is up to you. You are able to do what I wish I could be there with you to do."

"Okay, if dream and reality can be the same," Ariesa questioned, "then where is the line between? I mean…" She faltered slightly, afraid to ask. "That dream… I haven't had it in so long…"

"You haven't been dreaming, because you've been _doing_," she was told. "Many of your dreams have become… real. Or what you see as such. That is some of what I meant to say. And for that reason, you are now having the dream you meant to have. Because you made it that way."

"Me?" Ariesa squeaked. "I'm not anyone. I am no heroine. I'm just trying to get through it all, stuck in my dreams, things I want but can't find."

"Haven't found _yet_," corrected the other woman. "As long as you are alive, there is a chance. Sometimes even beyond… Do you know what a heroine _is_?" The mysterious woman straightened, with a presence at once both delicate and regal, and elegance Ariesa only remembered ever seeing from one other. _Blackpearl_. "Do you know what it is to be a princess, a queen?" she demanded. "It is more than simple birth, though that gives you plenty already, far more than you know. There is value to being a child of Mana, but one must still earn one's heritage, and one's future. You, remember, you imagine, you dream… and from this, you learn how to desire."

"I want…" Ariesa began once again, but this time, the answers burbled up. "Freedom. Love. Hope. Truth. Things the Goddess is meant to give us. But how do I find those things?" Ariesa asked. "We cannot find the Sword, and without it… no Goddess."

The woman before her reached out a hand in empathy, though not far enough to touch. "You think you are looking for the Goddess," she began, "and a hundred other things. But what you do not realize is that what you are looking for… it is looking for you."

"But the Sword… the power we need…" Ariesa protested, weakly and slightly panicked.

"Only if you understand what its power is, will it find you," was the response. "It is not meant to split and divide; it is meant to join. It is of the Goddess, and the secret of Mana is that the Goddess is love, for better or for worse."

"For _worse_?" Ariesa asked, wondering how that could be.

"Do you understand love?" Ariesa wasn't sure whether she should nod, or shake her head. "Do you know it is sometimes harder to _want,_ than to go without? Do you know how much easier it is to lose hope than to keep it, when the world threatens to fall apart around you?" To that, at least, Ariesa agreed. "Love is a greater risk than hate, in too many ways to count. Do you understand? Are you afraid of love?" she finished with a challenge.

"_Yes_!" Ariesa admitted finally, realizing, at the core of her soul, that it was the truth. She hung her head in shame, but the other woman did not speak, finally obliging her to reluctantly raise her head, and meet those green yes once again.

There was only kindness now in the other woman's gaze. "As you should be. But even so… it is for what the world and our lives exist." _If that was a question, _Ariesa thought randomly, _perhaps the Jumi provide the answer. _"But is it worth the risk?"

There was no doubt in Ariesa's voice. It was what she had been realizing since she found herself in this strange place. "_Yes_," she said, barely above a whisper, but still it seemed to ring like a shout.

A smile greeted her. "Then is you understand that… you know why bringing back the Goddess is a risk, but you know why it must be done nevertheless." She reached forward, and in her hand, a sliver of light appeared. "Even She has things she fears." The light widened, coalesced, merged into a shape Ariesa knew all too well.

It was a sword.

Ariesa grabbed for it instinctively, then snapped her hand away as if from a flame. The other woman held it forward, it hanging in the air before them as if waiting.

"This is not mine to give," the queen told her, the first hint of weariness creeping into her features. "It belongs to us all. But for the moment, this particular… manifestation, shall we say… chooses to be with you, to join you and help you find what you desire, to find your way out of the cage."

"But… I don't know…" Ariesa waffled.

"_I_ do," the other woman said emphatically, sudden fire in her eyes. "You are a knight of the Goddess herself. An Amazon, is what you should have been; once we were many, and proud, and fought for Her justice, even after She left us. I can only hope something of that is left in you. Will you try to find that once again?"

There was only one answer. "I will," replied Ariesa.

Worry disappeared, and peace crossed the other woman's face. "Then… hold out your hand." Ariesa reached out hesitantly, forcing her fingers every inch forward. The other woman's expression was gently encouraging. "Take this sword, close your eyes, and imagine."

Ariesa grasped the hilt, her fingers brushing the other woman's fingers, startled at the feeling of warm flesh. It lasted only a second before the other woman began to fade, to return to the flow of time. She cried out, but it was too late; the other woman was already gone, and her own breaths were all she heard in the now-empty cavern.

She turned her attention to the sword in her hand; it pulsed with Mana, with life, and she wondered what secrets it held, what legends it might create. What she might _create_.

She closed her eyes.

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Ariesa woke up in her bed, the dream rapidly fading, but it did not leave her with the startled nervousness it had so many months before. She turned to look over at Elazul, and she thought she knew why.

He himself seemed absolutely at peace, left arm draped over her, and the fingertips of his right hand brushing the top of her scalp. His body was pressed quite close to her, his core against her skin, not far from her own heart. _If only that really was what it suggested,_ she thought with a giggle. But Pearl was there in the room as well. It wasn't like there was going to be a lot of action tonight.

It was all depressingly platonic. She felt as if she couldn't keep her hands off him, and he seemed just as eager, but they still hadn't done… something she very much wanted to do with him. Lying in his arms this way was not helping that urge at all.

She tilted her head forward slightly, letting it move slightly with the rise and fall of the man's breaths, he shifting slightly against her. Pearl's own breaths could be heard across the room. Elazul's left hand pressed against her shoulder, and his raised arm revealed his core glowing slightly in that internal way that seemed to sparkle from within.

She always felt as if she could see inside his core when it glowed like that. _Or was it into his soul? Maybe a little of both_. She didn't understand it all yet – that, and a hundred other things - but she was starting to put it all together.

A sudden urge struck her, and one hand reached to touch his core. It resonated with her pulse after a few seconds, and he stirred slightly. She propped herself up on her arm and leaned over -

She pulled back with a yelp.

Elazul awoke instantly. "What is it?"

"Something - sharp." She rubbed her hip where it had stung, and both their eyes traveled down her arm.

There, in between them, lay a sword.

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**Author's Note: **There's a RL cameo in here, yes. Actually, more of a penname cameo, because it's pretty OOC for the person involved… I had the scene written long ago, then I realized the name would work in beautifully. It's a "thank you" for my most consistent reviewer ;)

And if you want to read an epic-style Breath of Fire fic with a rather cracked-out sense of humor… it's right there on my favorites. I don't know the fandom, so no guarantees on faithfulness to canon, but Meeerf doesn't really care.

Congrats if you read chapter 47… sheesh, that is the WEIRDEST chapter I have ever written. But I love it ;)

What next, yes? Yes, Meeerf has many devious plans. I am currently quoting an update time of 2-3 weeks, simply because… the next chapters are nearly 100% original, therefore EFFEN HARD to write. So, give me time : )

See you next update!


	49. Secrets: Thorn of hope

**49. Secrets: Thorn of hope**

Irzoile strode the streets of the capital city of Forsena, enjoying the way the people shrank before him. As well they should, before the man who they had named Deathbringer.

Not just Deathbringer, but "the" Deathbringer. The name was from the sword he was never without, a trophy from the deceased kingdom that had been the Beast Kingdom. It had once been a sword of a Forsenan warrior, and now it was home again, a trophy and symbol of the emperor's power.

His name was whispered in fear and awe in every alley of this, the city of Forsena, capital of the Forsenan empire. He had conquered half the world in his reign. He could _feel_ the fear, the respect, the awe, as he walked through the streets… and it gladdened him.

They called his wars the "Wars of Death." _Fitting_, he thought; but he wanted more, not only more power, but even beyond that. He wanted immortality, something that the conquest of paltry human kingdoms could not give him.

And he had found a way. It was a demon who had come to him; that much he knew, and hardly cared. The otherworldly creature had sent him a witch of reincarnation, offering him a lengthened life, in exchange for… a later favor.

Already he had far exceeded a normal human lifespan, and the whispers had begun. But even so, it was not enough; the magic of death was limited in its ability to give life. What he needed was some of the legendary Mana. _Real_ Mana, not the party tricks performed by today's so-called mages. Their power was minimal, and that was why he had always stuck with simple force.

He knew what he had to do. Anise had realized it, so long ago, and he would be foolish not to learn from the lessons of history. He would consort with demons if that was what it took; but ultimately, he would find his way to the Goddess. And she would be his as well.

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With the walls of Etansel behind him, and the view of the valley before him, Rubens stood facing the three girls. _Women_, he reminded himself; but they seemed so young, still. _The youngest of the Jumi_. Where had four sisters even _found_ the stones they needed, so late?

But they had them, and those stones had the _sparkle_, the rivulets of Mana flowing through them that many days he found it hard to find even within his own core. Perhaps they needed a few knights like these.

It brought the total roster of the Jumi to one thousand and two. Not that they had added a new name to the roster in some centuries. It had taken Diana the better part of a week to even find the scroll, cracked and tearing, and had been recopying it ever since, muttering her wonders and worries about the four Jumi sisters that had shown up on their doorstep, to a city where the Clarius was weakening. It was only a handful of years after the four had arrived that Lady Blackpearl had departed; but that was quite enough time for her to make an impression on the newest Jumi. As the oldest Jumi never failed to do.

There was a reason why he addressed these women in particular today. They had become Jumi, begun their search for the stone, to fight what Deathbringer had made of their homeland. They were originally from the once-free city of Maia, and had lived in the capital long enough to know, far more than they wanted to.

"The city is in danger," he told them, with a candor that not so long ago he would have never exhibited around those only Half-Lucidia. _But then again_, he thought, _a lot of things had changed, hadn't they?_ "We only have the tears of Florina left, and the threat of the empire grows closer with every year that Deathbringer defies his own mortality." Florina was too young to be Clarius, it was said, too fragile; but they had little choice. She was all they had.

Beryl, Margad, and Kata exchanged looks. What he was telling them was nothing new; though the Empire had always been a distant danger, it was not until these four had come that it was realized that distance might be far less than they suspected. But they were obviously wondering what role they were meant to play in it all, yet to their credit, enthusiastic and unafraid for whatever it might be. "What can we do?" Beryl spoke up, her eagerness proudly displayed.

"We could try to find Deathbringer, and get rid of him, now that we're Jumi!" added Margad with rash exuberance. "We're lucky together!"

Rubens sighed. "No, you three sisters have yet to be knighted." Grumbles arose among the women, but he ignored them. "I shall have to ask Lady Blackpearl."

"Lady Blackpearl?" asked Kata. "But... I thought she was expelled!"

Rubens braced himself, to reveal some carefully-hidden secrets that necessity dictated must be divulged. "Officially, yes. But now that you are about to become knights, about to leave the city, I will tell you… she is looking for Mana, for the sake of Florina." He felt a pang even mentioning the name of the Clarius, the woman who was calmly suffering for the sake of them all.

The sisters looked surprised. "We did not know," spoke up Beryl. "Where is she?"

"She travels around. Leires, Mekiv… wherever she thinks she can find some Mana."

"So it is magic you want?" Beryl asked reasonably. "Isn't Geo the place for that?"

"It is," Rubens affirmed. "And now I can tell you… I am sending you there. To see what you can find. Rumors of hunting have begun to trickle to us." It was their youth, their enthusiasm that gave him the hope that they might be able to find something that so many others had not.

The sisters looked puzzled. "No one has been allowed to leave," Kata wondered. "But now you want us to go to Geo… they say our cores are sold there."

"True, there was once a core shop there. It was closed for some time, but I have heard… it may have reopened again." He said those words dispassionately, even though they chilled his very soul; he hoped it was not true, but the twisted thing was, it might be the only chance to find some of the Jumi that were missing. "Does that scare you off?" he asked honestly, casting his gaze from one to the other and then to the third.

"No!" they exclaimed as one. "We're ready!"

They had come to him prepared to leave, as he had directed; no doubts, no regrets. But now, as they energetically turned to go, the youngest of the four sisters, Esmeralda, came running in. She was always the most enthusiastic, the most impulsive, the most charming of the four; but young, so young; even more so than her sisters, naïve in too many ways to count.

"Hi!" she announced brightly, greeting Rubens and her sisters as one. "Going somewhere? Are you going outside?"

Beryl, the eldest, spoke for all. "Esmeralda… we are not going on a vacation."

"Is it Geo?" Esmeralda asked blandly. "What? I've heard the same rumors as everyone else. New jewel hunters. But I don't care. I've always wanted to go there, to learn magic at the academy. I'm not afraid of the core shop."

"Why, Esmeralda?" Rubens interjected. "You are a guardian, isn't that good enough?"

Esmeralda looked at him then with surprising fierceness. "Because I can't cry. This is the only way I can do anything." She paused. "I want to be a knight like Blackpearl!"

Rubens found his old friend's name caused as much pain as ever. The things they had faced over the years, the things she bravely faced still, somewhere, out there, lost alone in the world. Still, there was some fire in this one, the same sort of fire he once had, that had once given him the nickname "Flame of Hope".

But he could not in good conscience let this girl get in over her head. She was a guardian, and as such, she would be protected, whether she liked it or not. "You have a responsibility, Esmeralda," he chided. "You protect the Mana within. That's why you, of all your sisters, became a guardian." Beryl, Margad, and Kata nodded agreement.

Esmeralda pouted. "What's so different?" she asked petulantly. "They're both there to protect Mana, aren't they?"

"Yes, and no," Rubens replied. "Perhaps one day, their value will be the same, and the difference inconsequential, but for the moment… Mana is scarce, and for that reason, the guardians are too precious to risk. We can only hope that one day it will not be necessary to guard Mana so tightly."

Esmeralda pouted, but said no more, and Rubens only watched as the sisters made their goodbyes to each other. Together, he and Esmeralda silently watched them leave the protection of the city, he sending out a quiet prayer to Goddess old and new for their safe return.

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She knew Deathbringer would be waiting for her.

She called herself only Sandra now. It was what Florina had always called her, the only one of the Jumi she truly respected. And loved.

And that was why she had taken Florina away.

It had only been a short time since she had sealed Florina in the prison meant to keep her safe, and she had wasted little time. It was a bare handful of Jumi whose cores she had taken before whisking the Clarius away; but now that Florina was safe, there was nothing standing in her way. Now, her path led her here.

She sauntered into the throne room with the confidence of someone who knew she was expected, if not precisely welcomed. That wasn't her problem, anyway. The guards bowed to her as she strode past the enormous double doors, but she paid them no mind. She gave even only the slightest acknowledgement of the man sitting on his throne, the man who carried himself with the arrogance of one who called himself both Emperor and Deathbringer.

"Greetings," Sandra said curtly. "Dismiss your servants."

Irzoile swept a glance around the room at the blank faces of the men who stood stiffly, almost lifelessly, at attention. "No need," he replied. "They will hardly repeat anything said here without my permission."

"So be it," Sandra replied, the problem already discarded, and she moved on to the matter at hand. "You know why I am here, of course?" He merely cocked an eyebrow, his eyes grim and slightly furious, not willing to admit that he had to pay back the favor he had accepted.

"Don't look so glum," she told him coyly. "What is wanted of you is not so great. In fact, you might even find it… enjoyable."

"Oh?" asked the emperor, leaning forward, suddenly interested. "What is it that your master wants me to do?"

_Our master_, Sandra thought, right after that cringing at the knowledge of her own slavery. It was a willing sort of slavery, but not without its costs. "Etansel," was the one word she spoke.

"The fabled Jumi city," Irzoile replied slowly, carefully. "What of it?"

Sandra let her mouth widen slowly into a blatantly seductive smile. "You will be the one to conquer it," she practically purred. "The primary… impediment.. is gone. They have no tears to heal. They are there for the taking." She could see the questions in the emperor's eyes; but she was hardly about to give away all her secrets.

Deathbringer leaned back against his throne, stroking his bearded chin thoughtfully. "That would indeed be a challenge," he said, clearly interested. "A magnificent display of my power. But it cannot be found."

"That is not a problem," Sandra replied. "I will lead you to it."

"But only a Jumi could - " Irzoile began, before Sandra harshly cut him off. "That is not your place to question! You will do as you are told!" she barked at him, and felt a small flush of fear as he jumped to his feet, furious at her impertinence. A long moment passed as the challenge hung in the air, and Sandra resisted the urge to breath a sigh of relief when he sat down again.

Not that it mattered. Neither of them had much choice.

"A question," he finally asked, breaking the silence, his voice now reserved and polite. "The cores… they have power. What do you plan to do with them?"

"There's many things that the power in the cores are good for." Sandra grinned evilly. "They can lead to the Goddess, or… away." He leaned forward, intrigued. "They are for me," she finished, barely keeping the lust out of her voice.

"And they will be yours." He reached below his throne, and pulled out - _a core_, Sandra realized with a start. It was a purple, one whose signature Sandra did not recognize; nevertheless, she cringed despite herself as he tossed and caught it casually with one hand. "I haven't been able to do anything with them. Can't get Mana out of them to save my life – so to speak." He laughed, a sound at once both mirthful and evil. "You might as well have them."

He tossed it in the air, and Sandra neatly caught it, storing it away in a pocket with satisfaction. _One closer_, she told herself, _as long as he doesn't get any ideas about keeping them. _"If it's Mana you want," Sandra told him flippantly, "you should start looking for the Stones."

"Stones?" he asked, puzzled. "Not cores, then."

"Not cores," she agreed. "Mana Stones. Guarded by dragons."

He pondered silently; she knew she had him. "Then, what will _you_ do with the cores?" he inquired casually.

"Not I. I am just the messenger. This is now the province of the Otherworld," Sandra told him. "The _true_ power, as well you know."

Deathbringer grinned at that. "And what of the Jumi?"

_What of the Jumi, indeed? _Sandra asked herself. _Better they quietly disappear, than continue to offer their false hope to the world. _"There is nothing left for the Jumi," she said, finding herself laughing without really knowing why.

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Esmeralda went through cycles of loneliness and happiness, as her sisters traveled to Geo and back, again and again. She was one of the Jumi now, yes, but there was still nothing that could replace those who now shared not only her blood, but her core as well.

Since Florina had disappeared, they had been more often out of the city than in, looking for clues to the hunting that seemed to be multiplying with the Clarius gone. And she was jealous every time, jealous that she was not allowed the same. No matter how many prattled to her about how important it was to be a guardian, she wanted to be out there, doing something, not stuck in the city like some dumb _rock_.

She hung on every word of their stories, and on the eve of their latest return, the four sisters found themselves all staying up late together. "It's the core shop we've been checking out, now more than ever," Margad related to her. "There's something… strange… about it."

Esmeralda pondered that silently. "Tell me about the magic academy instead," she asked, and they fell all over each other with stories of the odd teachers found there and the things that were studied. It made her yearn to be part of that world.

The sun was just rising above the horizon when they finally calmed down from their sisterly excitement, conversation finally reducing to a calm and mellow buzz, they relishing in the comfort of each other's company. Esmeralda smiled as she looked out towards the dawn breaking over Etansel, awash in calm and peace, the expressions mirrored on all four. She shut her eyes, sinking into that calm and letting it carry her away.

It was a rumbling that got her attention.

Not the grinding rumbling of an earthquake, or the murmuring roll of thunder, but this… a quiet, distant echo that nevertheless struck fear into her heart.

She was suddenly alert, without really knowing why. Her eyes shot open, and the first thing Esmeralda saw was the hand and face of her sister Kata.

"Something's happening," Kata whispered, and Esmeralda nodded. Beryl and Margad stood warily, grasping for the weapons they carried as knights, a nod from Beryl bidding her to prepare herself. The sound grew dully, gradually louder, and Esmeralda hastily pulled on clothing to trail outside, following her sisters.

Etansel was already in chaos. Jumi were running every which way, knights and guardians trying to stay together, hundreds of people turning the ordinarily-peaceful city into a panicked mob. Screams, cries, wails could be heard from all directions, pouring over each other into Esmeralda's ears as she whipped her head back and forth, her mind trying to put it altogether, trying to figure out what was happening before it was too late.

And then she saw. _Troops of the Empire._

Blankly, she wanted to believe at first that it was only a few, but as her eyes frantically sought her sisters, she realized the ugly truth. They were only the first, stiff ranks marching inexorably forward, she realizing the lines streamed back towards – where, she did not want to know.

It was not only men, she realized, frozen to the spot. More poured in accompanied by monstrous beasts, four-legged and two legged with all kinds of claws and teeth, and vehicles, strange machines she had never seen before, enormous things of metal rolling mindlessly forward with no emotion for the Jumi in their path. One fired a … projectile… a thing of fire and earth that collided with the precious rock walls of the Jumi city in a shower of sparks and ash, the thunder of the collision echoing all the way down the valley beyond.

That was not the worst of it. Her core cried out, and her voice screamed, as she realized what else was with them. _Demons_.

Some were hulking man-beasts, bipedal creatures of leathery hide and long-tipped claws, and some were… worse. Bestial, ghostly, and shapes her mind did not even want to comprehend. She knew, somehow, eerily, that if she reached for her core, those _things_ would have no power over her, but the jewel that was now so completely _her_, now never seemed further away.

_You're in shock_, she told herself objectively, but it did not help, nor did it matter that she remembered being told that Etansel was inaccessible to the Empire. There was only the here, the now, and it was coming for her.

"Go!"permeated a sound, she somehow realizing it was a voice of one of her sisters, but for the moment unable to place which one. She saw a woman with a face not unlike her own, weapon bared as one of the monstrosities bore down, and with some last spark of self-preservation, she _ran_.

Had she any tears, they would have streamed down her face as she barreled through the glowing corridors of Etansel, a city that she had thought would be sanctuary, a city she had hoped was the last home of Mana. _Mana is dead_, she told herself, noting that she had no true direction more than any of the others who tore directionless every which way, trying to save themselves.

They were everywhere now, uniform ranks marching in armor of Granz steel, carrying weapons of Forsenan and Lorimar iron. The resources that gave Forsena its power, the power to destroy, the powers now being unleashed against those who sought only to protect.

She cringed when she saw the first Jumi die.

The soldier struck him with the butt of his sword. It was some Jumi of topaz; she did not know him, but he looked to be a young man, his innocent eyes going wide as he crumpled under the blow. Esmeralda swallowed her horror, and flattened herself against the wall, partly hidden by the shadows, nowhere to run as the troops filled the city.

The Jumi wheezed, and tried to get up. Esmeralda braced instinctively, waiting for him to receive another swipe of the weapon. _It's alright,_ she told herself. _Jumi can heal from any injury. He will survive._

But instead, the soldier sheathed his long sword, reaching instead to his belt to pull out a slim knife. _Almost like a cooking knife, _Esmeralda thought hysterically, irrationally, her mind refusing to accept what it was there for, even when the soldier reached out and with a quick motion, flipped out the core.

The young man screamed, and screamed, and screamed some more, for the seconds left in his life until he dissolved back into the flow of Mana. Esmeralda could only watch her kinsman die in horror, wondering, incredulously: _Was it the cores that they wanted? So badly that they had dared to come and take not just the occasional one, but the entire city?_

Sense overtook her, or perhaps panic, and she fled once again.

_Where_, she did not know, only knowing that she had to get away, away from the horror that was opening before her. Hunting was one thing, but this was nothing short of genocide, as other Jumi fell around her to be reduced to the cores that had maintained them, each time her wellspring of sympathy drowned out by the guilty relief that it was not _her_ sentenced to die at the hands of another.

Suddenly, she found herself dragged to a screeching halt. She gasped as a hand firmly yanked her arm, shoving her against the rock wall behind her. She struggled viciously, trying to strike at her captor, but his sword was already at her core, and nausea overtook fear as she glimpsed the blade so perilously close to taking her life away.

She raised her eyes with her last ounce of courage, and somehow, appraised the man whose face was visible beneath the steel helm. _Wavy blond hair, soft brown eyes_ - he might have been called pretty, thought some mad part of her. But it was ruined by the salacious expression on his face.

"You're actually quite nice to look at," he told her, openly leering as he cast his eyes over her from top to bottom. His free hand reached out to touch her, beginning at her shoulder and traveling down her body in a most entitled manner. "Too bad you are nothing but… a rock. A thing. A lump of dirt."

_Better to be that_, she thought, _than to be a woman and have him take what he wanted_. She cringed backwards, humiliated, hoping only that he would have too much scorn for her to do much but take her life quickly.

Suddenly, the soldier screamed, as a familiar sword blade appeared protruding out of his stomach. Behind him, her sister Beryl twisted the weapon sadistically, the young man's gasps trailing off into gurgles as his insides were destroyed and blood welled up out of his mouth and abdomen. Beryl yanked her weapon out, sparing no more glance for it even for smug satisfaction, as she stretched out a hand to Esmeralda.

"Are you alright?" she asked hurriedly.

"Y-yes," Esmeralda gulped, "just shaken."

"Get over it quickly," her sister urged her. "You must leave before it is too late. I will cover your escape. Margad and Kata have already been taken."

Esmeralda felt a pang, as if the last bit of her heart and soul was about to die. _Two of her sisters, gone, and she had to leave the other behind. _Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a new group of soldiers; and as one spotted the two Jumi women, he yelled, and the group began running towards them, weapons already bared.

"I can't leave you behind," Esmeralda whispered. "I can't! You are the only sister I have left!"

Beryl looked at her with an expression of bone-deep sadness. In the distance, Esmeralda could hear the soldiers growing closer, but somehow couldn't find the energy to care. "You are my sister, and it was as sisters we found this," Beryl said as she touched her core, the jewel shining as calmly green as Esmeralda's. "But we are Jumi now. I am a knight, and it is my role to protect the guardians, for their lives are more precious than my own. They are the keepers of what really matters - our hope, our dreams, our future." Beryl whipped out her sword once again, and braced in a defensive posture. "You are a guardian, your responsibility is to survive!" Beryl shouted, as the soldiers fell upon them and she swept into action. "Now, run!"

And Esmeralda _did_, knowing that would be the last time she saw her sister alive.

She didn't stop running until she was somewhere out of the Jumi city, somewhere beyond the valley, somewhere in the grasslands at the border of the country that had once been her home – a country that had just destroyed everything she was now. She tumbled into the grass, and lay there spread-eagled, staring up at the sky, her chest heaving with exertion, and feeling with every breath the stone that was both her blessing and curse.

_Hope_, Beryl had called her. _Hope is a thorn_, she thought; being that hope had cost her everything she held dear. _Where would she go now?_ The stone in her chest was so much a part of her by now that ordinarily she barely felt it; but on this day, it felt like a boulder crushing her beneath its weight.

"Esmeralda?" she heard a familiar voice, and she sat up, dizziness overtaking her as she did.

It was a male hand that rested on her back to support her, and this close, she could feel the resonance of a Jumi core. Not just any core… this one she knew. "Rubens?" she asked hazily.

His face slowly coalesced in her vision. "Your sisters?" was his first question. Esmeralda could only shake her head, wishing she could cry; but though she was the youngest of the Jumi, the Mana of the race itself was so weak that tears were something she could not achieve.

"I am sorry," Rubens told her with genuine feeling. "They acted as true knights, if that is any consolation."

Esmeralda didn't know if it was or it wasn't, but suddenly found herself dry-sobbing into Rubens' coat. He wrapped his arms around her paternally, and minutes dragged by as emotion drained from her, until she was as limp as a doll in his arms.

"I can fight," she whispered, irrationally. "I want to go back!" She tried to stumble awkwardly to her feet, only to find the knight of the Lucidia restraining her, he having far more strength than she. She struggled, screaming at him to let her go, but finally weakened, collapsing like a rag doll once again.

"No, Esmeralda," he chided her gently. "There is nothing left to go back to. As soon as I find Diana… my guardian…" He raised his head in what Esmeralda was sure was the direction of the Jumi leader. _How many could not find their loved ones_ _without the knight-guardian bond_, she wondered; _how many would find those loved ones, ever?_ He looked back, and his attention returned to her once again. "Now, more than ever, it is important to remain a guardian."

"Where will you go?" she asked in a small voice.

"I'm not sure," Rubens replied. "Maybe Geo." _A city of magic, not the Goddess, _ noted Esmeralda; _what did he expect to find there? _"It seems to tug at me," he told her, as if reading her thoughts. "Maybe I just want to go somewhere I know there's Mana, with nothing left for us here. Are you going to go too?"

Esmeralda pondered that. Her sisters had just come from there; she knew every street, every building would remind her of them, and their memory was too fresh, too raw. Geo was the city of magic, and perhaps there she could find a way to bring them back, but for the moment… it was too soon for her to even admit that might be a necessity. "No," she replied. "At least, not yet."

"I see. But Esmeralda, don't forget… now, more than ever, you must find a way to keep your hope," he told her; although frankly he looked like he was rapidly losing his own.

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Rubens found himself pacing, as if trying to get somewhere but having nowhere to go.

The small apartment they had found in Geo was serviceable enough. It was just he and Diana. Perhaps he wished it could be otherwise… that the Jumi would be together… but at the core of it, it was about knights and guardians, and the two of them were destined to stay side-by-side, even if no others could be found.

He did not think Diana saw it that way.

She had become increasingly morose and inconsolable in the years they had been in Geo, and though he loved her every bit at much, he could not stop it. Perhaps it was understandable. She had been the leader, and she would feel responsible, deep down, no matter what happened.

It took a lot to break her… but it seems it had finally been done. Her guilt had long since overtaken the innocence the Jumi once had, when they could go any way they wanted, the innocence he dearly wished they could have once again. He had once been her support, her hope, in more ways than one, but this was beyond anything he could help, as either knight or lover.

But he tried.

_Clarius, wherever you are, I hope you are faring better than the are we_, he told himself as he fingered the brooch he meant to give her. She sat out on the balcony, watching the street below, and he approached her with an awkwardness that was a little bizarre for as long as he had know her. _No matter how long you know someone, there are always things you might not expect, _he thought to himself.

He reached over her shoulder, the deceptively innocent piece of jewelry so close to her core that she could not help but take notice. "What is this?" she asked, trying to feign indifference.

He placed her hand around it, and his fist closed around hers. She looked at him a bit wide-eyed, unable to hide her confusion, unable to deny what she felt from it. "It's an artifact," he told her. "A memory of what Mana was, and what it has endured, and how it promises us we can overcome any ordeal. It seemed almost to make her sadder. "It's what I hope for our love," he told her, his voice half-pleading in a very unfamiliar way.

She looked down, and away. _Can our love survive the loss of the Jumi? _Rubens wondered. _Is there nothing left without that, are _we_ nothing? _"The thorn of hope," she told him, as he tried to coax her for the millionth time into acceptance. "Why did we ever think we could survive, as we were? Why did I not see it?"

He didn't really have an answer; his own fire was going out. She was caged in her dreams for the Jumi; he was trapped in his love for her; and neither could find a way out. "There is still Lady Blackpearl."

The name of her ancient friend seemed to perk her up slightly. "Blackpearl…" she mused. "She does not know how fortunate she is, having missed the destruction of the city. How long has it been since you last saw her, Rubens?"

"Some time," he admitted. Years meant little to a Jumi.

"You should see her. She deserves to know. I would go myself if I could." Rubens recognized that. She missed her former knight; as much as she cared for him and was bonded to him, a knight-guardian bond could never be truly replaced, even by another.

"I will," he promised. "I will make contact tomorrow." Tentatively, he fingered the fragile and unprecedented bond the three of them had created. It was still there.

He would be traveling to Leires soon enough, he knew. But for the moment, he was content to merely remain close to Diana. He lay down next to her, her light-brown hair spilling across the pillows. _She never wore it down in Etansel_, he thought idly. But here, it was free, as were they.

The Jumi as a whole might be gone, but he was a knight, and he would maintain his strength, as long as his guardian lived. He pulled her closer, and drifted off.

------------------------------------

_Leires_.

The tower had always bothered Blackpearl in an inexplicable way. She had been all over the world, but she had avoided the tower as much as she possibly could, even the region around it. It had nothing to do with the fact that it was technically part of the Empire; whatever the lines on the map said, the Tower would never let the Empire use its power. No, it was the Tower itself; it always felt strange to her, as if it would draw her in against her will.

But it was their designated meeting spot, and for that reason, and that reason only, she found herself there.

She didn't have long to wait. The bond the three of them had designed linked her to Rubens quite effectively; and despite the separation of distance, he was there within the hour of she herself. She rose as he approached, remembering the last time they had met. It had been for he to tell her that Florina had been kidnapped.

It seemed it was never good news when they met, and it looked like this time would be no different. It was never good news when they met. Rubens' face grew long as he saw her, and she felt a knot, realizing perhaps the rumors she had heard were about to be confirmed.

He minced no words. "Etansel has fallen."

"The Empire. I have heard." She felt little pain, now; she had already had some time to adjust, and accept. But she was able to recall the pit that had appeared in her core and soul when she heard the first rumor whispered, only to be shushed by those who believed Etansel had never existed at all, leaving no one to mourn what they considered only a legend. _Hadn't that been her goal in the first place, to protect the city by cloaking it in secrets and mystery?_ She wasn't sure she remembered anymore. "Etansel has fallen," Blackpearl mused. "I suppose it was only a matter of time… our cores being stolen right and left…"

"Any luck finding the hunter?" Rubens asked her.

"Little," she admitted. "All I know for sure is that it's getting worse; it's dangerous to be a Jumi. That's hardly news." She harrumphed. "But I suspect… There are too many things she knew, and knows still, for it to be just anyone. I wonder…"

Rubens hissed as he caught her unspoken assumption. "If she was one of us?"

Blackpearl set her mouth in a firm line, not caring to comment further, not until she could put a few more things together. She wondered if someone was trying to beat her to the Sword, or if not, what else that someone might be doing. Parts of it all did not fit together. What did the Empire have to do with any of it? But she said none of these things.

"You're not giving up, are you?" Rubens asked.

"Absolutely not," BP replied. "If anything, it makes my own goal more urgent." Her shudder belied her confidence, and Rubens noticed. "This tower, then?" he asked. "Is this where the Sword is?"

"No… I thought, maybe," Blackpearl replied after a long moment. "But… it's a great power. Maybe something different." She paused once again. "But right now… I only feel… or know.. I have to go in. We've met here several times, but I've never entered the damn thing." _Since I got my core_, she silently finished for herself.

Rubens nodded. "Good luck, then," he said; and they left the goodbye at that. It was barely a moment before the forest hid her old friend once again.

Suddenly, the quiet of the forest seemed positively oppressive. Blackpearl found herself gripping her hammer a little tighter as she crossed under the raven-decorated gate. Being as old as she was did give one a way of being honest with oneself; and it was to herself that she admitted the truth. She was scared.

There was something about this place… a vague flicker of recognition, or a remembrance long gone. It felt like a sort of homecoming, naturally; it was the place where she had found her core. Like all Jumi, however much one's old memories may have faded, that one in particular never let go. Still, she had the uneasy feeling that there was more to the tower, something she couldn't remember no matter how hard she tried.

It resonated with her, it whispered to her. It teased her, it frightened her. But most of all… it called to her.

That was the only thing that kept her moving forward, one step in front of another, as she stepped across the threshold to find a rubble-strewn scene of ancient decay… the dead remains of something that had once been grand but now was crumbling into dust. Still, it remained standing, however broken it might look. _An apt analogy_, she thought to herself. Not unlike the Jumi were as well.

The thought gave her courage, pushing her forward with invisible hands, room after room, up the staircase at the end, and once more again. First one step, then another, then another.

Her core thrummed with the Mana filling the place. Not the sort of Mana she was familiar with, the gentle breathing of the core reflecting the life of the bearer. No, this was a turbulent, seething mass of flow, more than she could remember ever feeling at the same time, in this world without the Goddess.

Perhaps this place missed the Goddess as much as she herself did. _How many things would be different, were she with us still_, echoed the thought in her head.

Lost in that dreamlike trance, she pressed forward, not questioning why the lamps were lit in a place that had obviously seen no human foot in centuries. She mapped the place out in her head, every wall, every path, but… it didn't seem to all fit together. It was as if the path kept changing before her, she finding herself in the same spot over and over when she knew it should have been different, stairs connected in crazy ways, some meandering the sides of the building, some traveling through the center. It was as if the tower itself was fighting her, resisting the path she was choosing.

She paused, annoyed at being played with that way. Well, if the tower didn't like the way she was going, she supposed she couldn't argue with it. She cleared her head, and moved forward without thinking, simply following what appeared in front of her.

Blackpearl could almost swear she heard the tower breathe a sigh of relief, and the path certainly seemed straighter this time. Within minutes she found herself facing a set of heavy doors, inlaid with the pale silver of Lorant and the darker sort of Wendel, accented by leaves of Vizel gold. Suddenly, that vague sense of unease that she had become accustomed to flashed into being again, this time as full terror.

She caught her breath, and memory threaten to surface, an unwilling part of her pushing it down as much as she reached for it. It stopped her practically in mid-stride, a tumult of misunderstood feeling, and she struggled to recover her cool composure, finally squashing the distracting emotions.

She took a deep breath, and threw open the doors.

The room beyond opened before her, luminously filled by moonlight that rippled over an enormous mirror that overtook the floor. Its reflective surface shone peacefully, its bronze setting glittering only slightly. Blackpearl paced the circumference that enormous mirror, eyes drawn towards it, but somehow, she did not want to touch it yet.

Against the wall stood an enormous and ancient old chair, its pillows tattered and threadbare. It was somehow inviting nonetheless, and suddenly weary, she sat and sank into those cushions, gazing through the skylight ahead to the moons beyond, their light gently reflecting on the mirror as if in a pool of water.

The moon itself was said to house memory; it put her in a contemplative mood. She let whatever memories she still had wash over her, pondering everything that had happened, wondering if she was at the beginning once again. Before, she had felt the tower reaching for her; now, it could have been the moonlight, the quiet, or the simple repetition of her own thoughts that made her feel as if the tower was seeing into her very soul. The sensation made her profoundly uncomfortable.

But she had always done what Mana asked of her, and she heeded the call now.

Rising, she walked the borders of the mirror, her gaze settling on the bronze carvings with every step. With every pace, she felt as if she was walking again every step of her life. A full circle, and she knelt down, across from the door, though pragmatically one eye led to it in case she needed to escape.

She observed her reflection analytically. _I am a Jumi_, she said to herself. It was true; that was the core, so to speak, of who, and what, she was now. Jumi were there to protect, to heal; but did not all the destruction that had been wrought against them defy what the Jumi were?

A sudden, sparkling revelation occurred to her. "_Alexandra_," she whispered out loud, intense clarity suddenly filling her. "She is the jewel hunter." Ever since she had left Etansel to follow the traces of Alexandra's core, she had been bothered by the nagging suspicion that Florina's former knight had been the one to take the Clarius away; but a hollow spot began to form in her heart as she realized that Alexandra might have been behind the hunting. And so much more.

_Why? _argued another voice deep within, but she _knew_. Alexandra's accusations still rang clear in her head, angry words she had deflected because she could not acknowledge how deep they had cut. _How much truth was there to them?_ She found herself tracking back the parts of her life, at least, as much as she could remember. She wondered how much of herself she had lost, and felt a pang of desire to reclaim it.

It left only one option, as much as she disliked it. She had to hunt Alexandra down. One of her own. The realization made her heart sink, as she mentally added one more black mark to the tally of decisions she wished she never had to make. Passion, anger, threatened to overwhelm her, and with difficulty, she forced them back down again, latching onto her own reflection in the mirror. The past would not let her go so easily, and as she stared into the reflective floor below her, her image… _changed_.

It was not just a shape, but a _sense_, a _sensation_ building in intensity, the representation before her distorting and rippling, changing into a younger self she was not ready to face. She balked in uncharacteristic panic, shrinking back from things she did not want to see, did not want to remember.

Only to find that the reflection stood before her.

A small, pale _girl_, the form of a woman but not yet truly grown in a hundred ways that went beyond her simple physical shape. Eyes trusting, innocent, hopeful, questioning… all things she had given up so long ago, things she did not have the luxury of feeling again.

Panicked, irrational, she gave a mighty shove to push away the other woman, the woman who was _herself_ as well. The figure tumbled to the ground, disappearing just before impact, a look of wide-eyed surprise and fear on her face. Unfathomably, she found herself crumpling as well, gasping as she found herself kneeling on the mirror's edge, overcome with regret for that one impulsive action, for losing control of herself. She felt bad, and afraid, like a little girl, far younger than even the one she had seen. There had been answers there in that vision, or whatever it had been.

She wished she could cry, and idly, she wondered if she had ever cried, even before the Jumi had lost their tears, even before she had even been Jumi. She could not remember. She was no guardian; she guarded the Jumi, yes, but it was the guardians who guarded Mana itself, and that was the more important by far.

That was not who she was. She was a knight. "A dark knight," she whispered to the moonlight above. _There is one light behind another_, Diana once had told her, and she thought of that as she stared at the moon, the moon that hid behind the sun during the day. Light within the darkness. That was who she was.

The thought gave her little reassurance now, as she leaned forward, wishing with all her heart she could cry, for those who had died, for those who had escaped, for the future of the Jumi. But most of all, she wanted to cry for herself.

She wondered if it was too late.

It seemed an eternity before she turned towards the door, though the moons had barely moved. She was ever more subdued as she retraced the corridors and stairs to the bottom, the path now straight and clear before her. If only the rest of her life was as well.

_There is a reason hope was in Pandora's box,_ she thought, recalling the old legend. _It is an evil like any other. _She wished she could think of it any other way, but the bitter taste in her mouth would not wash out.

She felt relief as she left those gates behind, but also a sense of loss, as if she had left yet another part of herself behind.

------------------------------------

Even after he returned to Geo and related his encounter with Blackpearl, Rubens still found Diana pessimistic and heartbroken. _Was Blackpearl truly the only one with any hope, any drive, left?_ he wondered. He was certainly having trouble finding it for himself.

He told her only the good things, reluctant to share the idea Blackpearl had put forward as to the identity of the jewel hunter; but she didn't need his words to bring him down. "Blackpearl feels… different, since you parted from her," she told Rubens, fiddling with her hair. She never wore it up anymore, and Rubens finally had some idea why. Her clothes were elegant, but simple as well. She wanted nothing that reminded her of who she once was.

"How do you mean?"

"She's… changed. Something has either left, or arrived, and I'm not sure which, nor do I know if this is good or bad." She turned to her lover. "I can't sense her so easily."

That bothered him immensely. Diana's tenuous, ancient connection was the only thing that enabled him to find Blackpearl. Without it, there would be no way to know where in the world Blackpearl was.

It was entirely possible he might never see his old friend again.

"There is so little of us left," Diana continued. "So few, and so little to give… It was all my fault, I couldn't hold them together." She sniffled slightly. "And even now, I can't cry over it. Isn't that just ridiculous?"

"Don't," said Rubens, suddenly very uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking. But she didn't seem to hear him.

"I should just give myself to the jewel hunter. What more can I do?"

"_Don't_!" This time Rubens grabbed her, forcefully, turning her towards him, wondering if the delicate woman could actually break. "Diana, you used to have hope!"

She turned her head away, but he would not let her go, and she turned to face him, reluctantly, but she did, and he continued. "Blackpearl is still alive, and so am I. Those are two people to place your hope in."

"How little to cling to," Diana murmured, wilting slightly against him as if he was the only thing holding her up. "If something happened to Blackpearl, the Jumi would be finished, and I would have nothing left to hope for." That stung Rubens; that was he had always thought of himself as being. But then again, he was now as helpless as she was, a lone soul fleeing on the wind.

He understood, and wished there was some way to let Blackpearl know how many people were putting the last of their faith in her.

------------------------------------

Larc surveyed his troops critically.

He was a general, and had been for so many years, that he barely bothered to count any longer. Like all the higher-ups of the Forsenan army, he had received the _gift_ – as their Emperor called it – of a longer life. But that gift of life was meant for one thing, and one thing only, and that was to conquer in his name, to deal more death.

He was good at what he did – too good. It had earned him his nickname: "Larc the Conqueror." He had committed heinous crimes in the name of his sovereign, but it was for the most recent that he had the most regrets. It had been a decade since the Jumi city had been destroyed, and he did not think the world could ever recover. More so, it had been done for no reason at all, as near as he could figure, other than as a show of strength; the cores had been scornfully discarded, never to be seen again.

It was the emperor he hated, not the empire. He was from Forsena, the capital proper, and he knew it possibly better than anyone. His sister, naturally, was from there as well, but life had long since taken her down a different path. As much as he admired her, he was on his own.

Since the day Etansel fell, he had been preparing for this moment; but it had been the emperor's recent talk of searching for the "dragon stones" that had spurred him into action. He had assembled his forces over time, carefully so as not to attract undue suspicion; men and women discontented, disillusioned in the same ways he was, soldiers who were now loyal to him personally.

Now, they were poised above Byzel for their first attack, ready to cut off the Empire's wealth. This time, he knew what he was conquering, and why. He would deserve the nickname he had earned.

He thought of Sierra; it had been some years since he had seen her, but whether she knew it or not, what he did today was for her. He had always sought to protect her, even as he admired and emulated her. And he would save her with his own life, if he could.

------------------------------------

"The Jumi City. Gone," Sierra murmured.

Vadise rested on her forepaws, blue eyes blinking. "I thought it would never fall," she said, half to herself, and half to her dragoon anxiously pacing the clearing. "One of the few true pockets of Mana left in this world."

She did not need to be told to know what the real source of Sierra's agitation was. The woman had come to her before the Wars of Death had even hit full force, seeing where things were going, and wanting to do something to make a difference. Sierra had been much younger then, but she had taken on the responsibility, and the near-eternal life that came with it, bravely never looking back.

But that didn't mean she felt pain any less, and the news of Etansel's demise had made her eager and brash once again. Sierra's eyes flickered towards the small glade to the side.

"No, Sierra," the dragon chided gently. "It's far too soon. It will be at least another century before that thing is of any use, and even so, I doubt it will reach full maturity until the Goddess returns."

Sierra plopped herself on a tree trunk with a wry smile. "I suppose that means I can expect to stick around here for a while more, then."

"Do you mind?" Vadise returned the expression lovingly. Sierra grinned in response.

After a moment, Vadise spoke again. "What is your brother doing?" The siblings were rarely in direct contact, but she knew full well that Sierra always kept one eye on Larc.

"He is in Forcena, mounting resistance from within," Sierra replied. "It is the only hope. No other countries other than Forsena itself are strong enough to defeat it."

"Perhaps you are right," Vadise mused.

"What is it, my liege?" Sierra asked, always sensitive to the moods of the dragon.

"I am thinking…" Vadise paused, trying to clarify what it really was that she was thinking. "I think… it is all tied together. We cannot afford to stand aside, or it will come to us unbidden."

Sierra grew wary. "What is it you would have me do?"

Vadise focused her blue eyes on her dragon. "Go to your brother, and I will be right behind you."

------------------------------------

The dragon stones were going nowhere, thought Deathbringer. All that he had really managed to do was severely piss off some dragons, and had nothing to show for it.

It was a sudden, mad urge that had led him this day to enter the Underworld. He had heard there was a dragon down here; but that wasn't what he was here for, not this time. There was a Wisdom as well, but he hardly thought Olbohn would have any words he would like. Perhaps it was the simple thirst to see death all around him that had pulled him down here, meandering through corridors comforting in their feeling of loss and desperation.

Flickers of motion in the air distracted him in a very bothersome way, and he instinctively swatted whatever bug it was with a sharp motion of one hand. He saw a brief flash of candy-bright color at the edge of his vision, and improbably, an echo of shrill, giggling laughter. His head swiveled, and before he could focus on… whatever it was, it disappeared before he could focus on it, and suddenly that irritating laughter was all around him.

"Where are you?" Deathbringer growled, his voice echoing down the empty, dead caverns. "What are you? Fairies? Down here?"

"No, not _fairies_," a squealing, child-like voice replied. "Only their shadows."

Suddenly, they were all around him. Wispy, bodiless spirits, only the barest hint of facial features other than enormous, bulging eyeballs, and he knew. "Shadoles," he grumbled.

"Indeed!" they replied as one, their voice a strangely hypnotic sing-song. "What brings the Deathbringer here? Here to find the pretty Stone that's here?"

"Not today," Deathbringer snarled. "Leave me alone."

"Oh, but you want Mana, don't you?" they cooed. "Don't you want to know the way?"

That snapped Deathbringer to attention. He wondered what these ridiculous creatures could possibly know. "Tell me," he ordered, in his most commanding tone.

"You're not very nice," the one in front pouted. "But it would be pretty funny to send you after it."

"Tell me!" Deathbringer roared once again.

"Alright, already! Geez!" the Shadole replied. "You have to find the Goddess."

"I don't care about the Goddess, she's too pathetic to matter," Deathbringer replied scornfully. "I just want her power, her Mana."

"She doesn't really have much… now," the Shadoles replied. "She has to be unlocked."

"Unlocked?" Deathbringer asked.

"Yes," the Shadole replied. "Unlocked… or _awakened_, if you will. Find the key. Find the sword. The Sword of Mana."

_The Sword of Mana._ Something inextricably linked with the old legends of Anise, the thing that she had first hoped to find, a failed search that had led her to create the Eyes of Flame instead. Irzoile had always discarded that as pure fantasy; but now, that ancient secret came to visit him once again.

"That's all there is to it, huh? Great," he said sarcastically. "How am I supposed to do that?"

"The things you seek now… the things of Mana… they can lead you there, if only you know how to follow," the Shadoles murmured. "Sproutlings. Fairies, perhaps. Mana Stones. Jumi cores."

_Jumi cores._ "That damned Sandra," Deathbringer snarled at the last. "That's what she wanted them for."

"The Sword… it is the ultimate weapon," the voice of the Shadoles hissed.

The ultimate weapon… the very idea was too good to pass up. Deathbringer wheeled around and headed up to the surface once again, new motivation filling him. He knew now what he sought, and he would find it if it killed him.

------------------------------------

Sierra found herself above the capital of her homeland once again. She could not remember how many years it had been since she had last been here; the White Forest of Vadise was her home, now, and the Empire was no longer the same place as that in which she had been born.

But her brother by her side was as familiar as ever. It had been years since she had seen him last… but to her, he never really changed. He was all the family she had; he was her history, and the past would always be.

She had many reasons to be proud of him. The resistance he had built had become the stuff of legend, and with every success, every inch of territory over which the Empire's control weakened, more flocked to him and his cause. "Larc the Conqueror," Sierra mused out loud. "Seems to suit you, really."

Her brother only grinned, sharp canines filling the smile.

"If only you had the Jumi with you," she continued, "just as in the Fairie Wars so long ago. Rumors said they were ready to join, to fight once again, even after hundreds of years of isolation."

Larc's face fell. "I wish it could be so," he told her mournfully. "But even before, well, the destruction of their city - " here he looked down in shame – "they were weakened. They were not what they were back then." Sierra remembered Vadise's comments on the Mana Stones, and wondered how so little Mana could be left in the world. "We are pretty much on our own," Larc told her, as if echoing her thoughts.

Sierra looked down the hill and over the grasslands once again, staring at the city beyond. "So, what now, then, brother?"

"Glad you asked," Larc bantered. "We bring death to the Deathbringer."

------------------------------------

Time passed, years drifted by. Years meant little to a Jumi. They lived, in a sense, Rubens trying to make a way for them, and Diana never quite returning to the person she must have been.

News and rumors traveled to Geo, naturally. It was said Deathbringer had been killed; but this was little consolation to either of them. Gratifying, perhaps, but it did not bring back what had been lost. And as time wore on, it seemed the Empire itself was little changed, and Rubens wondered if Deathbringer was indeed gone after all.

Those rumors were perhaps – twenty? Thirty? years old already, and the last time he had seen Blackpearl was even a couple of decades more than that. As much as it had once hurt him, he had nearly forgotten all those things, settling into a routine that was – comforting, if nothing else.

Only to have it violently broken one night.

It was perhaps close to midnight, and Rubens lay peacefully against Diana, his arms around her, he himself at that border where part of him seemed to be asleep but was still awake enough to be aware of the outside, the sounds of the street below, the warm desert breezes that snuck their way through the windows. Suddenly, Diana sat bolt upright, her shrieks filling the silence that had been there only a moment before.

"What is it?" Rubens asked, worried, and though he wrapped his arms around her, he screams would not stop.

"She's gone," Diana wailed, "she's dead…"

Rubens did not need to ask who she referred to. "Blackpearl?" he asked, incredulously. "Dead? Are you sure?" he asked. The woman had been the one thing that had always been there in the background, the one thing that gave them hope, the one thing that convinced them that there still was something called the Jumi.

"It was gone… just like that. What else could it be?" she said, anguished. "You would think if anything could make me cry, it would be this…" She collapsed into dry sobs against Rubens' chest.

Rubens held her close, but he knew part of his own heart had died as well. They were only barely Jumi any longer; they were only two people, together. Only, as simple humans, they had lived far too long. Was it in the human mentality to process that? Could they ever pretend to be ordinary?

For her sake, he did.

It wasn't easy. It was clear to him that she had given up, every day there seeming to be a little less life, a little less sparkle to her. He tried to create some sort of mundane life for the two of them, but Diana did not know to be anything other than what she had been.

Perhaps it was some sort of last, desperate, romantic gesture that spurred him to take her to a ball being held at the mansion in the north of town. To his pleasant surprise, she seemed to take to the idea. For once, she dressed in her old style, finding an elegant dress for the occasion, and piling her hair up in the elaborate hairdo she once had worn. With pleasure, he noticed her pinning the brooch he had given her onto her dress, almost seeming an afterthought, but placed significantly just above her heart and just to the right of her core. As he watched her compulsively working every strand into place, Rubens stared, fascinated, once again seeing the beautiful, strong leader of the Jumi he had fallen in love with.

Not that anyone besides him would notice; it was better that way. Still, as the entered the festively lit mansion, her simple beauty captivated many in the room.

It was not what interested Diana the most. The mansion's owner was also a great keeper of artwork, ancient and modern. She fingered the brooch absent-mindedly as she wandered among the statues, stopping in front of a slightly whimsical sculpture of a centaur, wearing a large, floppy hat and carrying a lute.

"Stone," she murmured. "Trapped in it forever, aren't we? Only we still live, somehow, while they - " she motioned to the statue – "are free of it all."

"We're not just stones," Rubens murmured to her nervously. He realized he was truly running out of ideas, and things to say, things that could help.

Determinedly, he wrapped an arm around her waist, and steered her out to the gardens beyond. She did not bother to resist, a limp figure content to follow wherever he might lead her.

The sounds of the rest of Geo enjoying themselves faded into the distance, finally leaving the two of them blissfully alone… alone, that was, except for a sproutling meandering unconcerned among the plants. Rubens had no idea where the things came from – it had been perhaps in the past century or so that they had first been seen, and now seemed to be sprouting up everywhere, so to speak.

The gardens were beautiful things, certainly, at once both sculpted and wild, but Diana seemed drawn instead to the tree that was at the center. Not the Mana Tree, of course; this was only an ordinary oak, but shapely and ancient nevertheless.

She sunk down to the ground, at the last second remembering to neatly wrap skirts around her. The sproutling wandered over to her inquisitively. "The Tree. The Goddess," she murmured, barely audibly, turning her head up to the branches above. "Lost Mana. Lost knowledge, lost desire, lost hope. Lost dreams, lost love. Perhaps it was not to be." Her gaze traveled back down, but she looked not at Rubens standing at her side, but rather at the sproutling beside her. "I cannot find the will to trust that the Goddess will return."

The sproutling placed its leafy hands on her knee, and she met its gaze mournfully. "I like trees," it announced with a tinge of sadness.

Rubens couldn't take it. He pulled her to her feet, and wrapped his arms around her, determined never to let her go. She laid her hands gently against his waist, but she had no words left.

It was too late to stop her when he realized what was happening. The petrification began at her hands, but she had no second thoughts, and her determination drove it to her core in a matter of instants. Her body did not fade slowly, the sparkle fading out of her, but instead all her light flashed away at once.

"No," he whispered as he realized what he saw before him. He wanted to scream; but it would not come out. He wanted to cry; but that would never be.

He was left touching the face of a stone statue that had once been the woman he loved, even he in the end unable to give her the hope she needed.

------------------------------------

Esmeralda had been in Geo only a short time, but long enough to tell her Diana and Rubens were no longer there. Careful, discreet inquiries had yielded nothing, but really, that was nothing her core had not already told her; she sensed plenty of Mana, but no other Jumi, in the city.

She had hoped, a little bit, to find them; but really, she was on her own. By now, she was used to that. She had wandered the world for a while, telling herself she was "exploring" rather than running, until she finally believed it. And after Deathbringer had been killed – or so she had heard, though frankly she wasn't sure _what_ to make of the many strange rumors coming from her homeland – the worst was over, and the world got a little safer. The territory of the Empire receded – border territories such as the Midnight Forest drifted away, and the Empire's always-tenuous hold over Geo was now nonexistent.

Of course, there was the jewel hunter; but then again, that was why she had come to Geo, at long last.

Geo was not a city of the Goddess. It never had been. _So why was she here_, she asked herself? Really, it was only to refresh her own memory. Her sisters had been looking for clues to the jewel hunter here; that much she knew. And with them gone, she was the last one to become a knight, to take up their sword (so to speak) and finish what they had started.

There was one thing more, though she hesitated to form the thought, to give herself inappropriate hope. Geo was the city of magic. If there was a way to find her sisters, to bring them back… a way that did not involve the tears she still did not have… here was the place to find that.

She found her way to the magic academy, the laughing voices of students drawing her in, and among the crowds… a sproutling. It skittered randomly, only to stop sharply in front of her. "I'm only thinking about flowers in bloom!" it announced cheerfully.

Despite herself, Esmeralda couldn't help but laugh. The thing was ridiculous. "Me too," she told it, and with a deep breath, strode forward towards the doors before her.

------------------------------------

The winds of Gato whistled through the mountains, and Rubens sat on the cliffside terrace looking towards the lake below, contemplating.

It was over, leaving only the memories. He had years of things to contemplate.

The Empire was defeated; not crushed, but it would never be what it had been, before Deathbringer's greed destroyed it. Not that it really mattered. It wouldn't bring back the Jumi, and it wouldn't bring back Diana. He only wondered how many were left in the world to be sought by the hunter; it was now a question of _when_, not _if_, she found them all. Including him.

At first, he had run blindly, trying to put as much distance between himself and Geo as he possibly could. He didn't know what had kept him going. It was no longer hope; perhaps it was the Goddess herself who had led him to unknowingly following a trail of Mana, to find himself here in Gato; back to the Goddess, to the Goddess that had betrayed him and all the Jumi. It was as good as anyplace to sink into anonymity, he supposed.

The Halloway priestess and her Liotte knight had noticed immediately the fairies flocking to him, the torches burning brightly at his presence. They had not questioned who he was; he could just as well be elven as Jumi. That served him well, it would cover confusion should anyone notice he did not age. Perhaps the priestesses knew, and merely chose to protect him; it meant all the same, as far as he was concerned.

He tried now to remember as little as possible. A distracting memory crept up, of once, long ago, being called the Flame of Hope. How wrong he had been. Hope was every bit the thorn that Diana said it was. He had given that up, along with everything else he had ever been a part of. There was only the now.

"Hope," he murmured to the empty air. "They say ninety-nine percent of a person's life is fate, and the last one percent is hope. Such a small bit to rest it all on."

The empty air responded, resolving itself into a fairy. Rubens blinked slightly. "A creature of the Goddess," he said harshly. "So, you come to me now, after all is said and done?"

She seemed affronted. "We are less creatures of the Goddess nowadays than you yourself are, _Jumi_."

Rubens flinched at the address. "What are you doing here?" he challenged.

"I came…" she stuttered, slightly aback. "We… we normally dislike the humans, but the Jumi… well, I came to help."

"You're too late for anything you could have done for me," he said, laughing ironically, reveling in the sound echoing across the valley. The fairy balked. "I once thought the Goddess could help, but if she Herself can't, there's hardly anything you could do."

"Or you just don't care?" the fairy responded. Rubens had no answer.


	50. Legends: Thorn of hope

**50. Legends: Thorn of hope**

"The Sword of Mana," Daena said, plinking it down a few times as if to reassure herself that it did, in fact, exist.

"The empire spent so much time looking for that…" Thoma trailed off.

Sierra regarded it thoughtfully. "Such a small object, for so many hopes and dreams to be based on."

They had all come; those who had promised, those who she had called for. Her friends, all, and if she needed them ever, she needed them now; in more ways than one, she thought. The twins stood by the table, elven ears pricking, noses leaning in, fascinated with the artifact that had decided to visit their house. Escad held back, somewhat nervously; while Elazul and Pearl stayed serenely removed, he leaning against the couch, she sitting on it with legs crossed.

Pearl was changed, she saw. There was a wisdom in her eyes that wouldn't go away. She had the answers, but she wasn't talking. Not yet, anyway.

"So, we just take this thing, find the tree, and that's that?" Daena was asking.

Sierra only laughed. "Girl, do you really think it's that easy? People have been looking for this thing for hundreds of years. Its secrets will not give up so easily."

Daena bristled slightly at the implied insult. "How would you know?"

Sierra gave the cat-girl a withering look. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-four," Daena announced proudly. "Why, how old are you?"

"Two hundred thirty-five," Sierra announced proudly.

Ariesa was more or less tuning it all out. Her best friend was a little insulted, and she really ought to be bothered by that. But she had bigger things to worry about.

She lounged in a chair by the door, watching the sproutling outside. She caught the eyes of Elazul, briefly, her worry mirrored in his eyes, before he turned to look at his guardian once again. Pearl hadn't moved, eyes focused with an intensity that belied her calm demeanor.

Bud spoke up. "But, I mean, it's still supposed to get us to the tree, and we're just trying to figure out the details? How to bridge it to the Goddess, or something?"

" 'An opening in space, a doorway to beyond, the key to the Goddess,' " Lisa quoted. "That's what Kathinja said it was."

"It's not so simple," Pearl said gently, and suddenly all eyes were on her.

Pearl looked absolutely embarrassed at all the sudden attention, and Elazul quietly moved a couple steps forward, placing one hand on her shoulder to encourage her to continue. That was the Pearl she knew, for sure. And for the rest… Maybe everyone in the room didn't know Blackpearl, but they knew enough to know that Pearl knew a thing or two.

When Pearl spoke, she began hesitantly, with all the shyness she had when Ariesa had first met her. "You can't just find it," she began. "There's… a barrier, kind of, but not the way you might think. There's the magic part, which Anise tried to get through… but really, you need the Goddess's permission."

"Is that what you're saying? We have to sit around and _wait_?" asked Escad angrily. "We can't just _find_ the tree?"

"We can… a bit…" Pearl continued. "I guess you could say it will meet us, or maybe more accurately, it will look for the one who has the Sword." All eyes turned to Ariesa.

"I doubt that's possible," Escad said sharply.

Daena looked at him abruptly. "After all you have seen?" she said sharply. "You have so little faith?" They descended into bickering, and Ariesa instinctively tuned it all out.

Elazul was the only one who remained silent, looking at her with the same piercing look he always had. At least, superficially it looked the same; but at the same time Ariesa knew it carried much more than that.

Finally, she looked at the Sword itself. Kathinja had told her it was the only hope; and frankly, she believed it. She knew it was hers; hers to take, hers to lead, and frankly, she was terrified. She wanted nothing more than someone to tell her what to do, to save her the trouble of making tough choices and making them _wrong_.

Sierra seemed to sense her mood, stepping away from the others and speaking so none could hear. "We just make our best guess as to what the Goddess wants," she told her gently.

Ariesa nodded, and stood. "You've been chosen!" the sproutling outside suddenly shrieked, to no one in particular; but she couldn't shake the uncomfortable feeling the comment was meant for _her_.

She stood, reluctantly, feeling the eyes of her nearest and dearest upon her, and strode towards the table where the Sword sat, mindless of all the conflict it was causing. Her hand reached towards it for comfort, and she took a deep breath, gripping the weapon for some sort of reassurance.

"I feel… all I can get is some sort of vague direction," she announced to the group. It was a pull towards the northwest, towards the snow, but stopping before then; some sort of vaguely define halfway point between where she and Elazul had each been born.

She cast a glance over them, the people who had been there through it all. She weighed once again the importance of every single one in her life, people who had not been in her life a year before but now she felt as if she couldn't live without. "Everyone," she announced in her most confident possible voice, feeling suddenly nervous as all eyes turned to her. "It doesn't matter why, or how. This is what we came for, and this is what we have to do."

She wasn't sure she had even convinced _herself_, but Elazul gave her the barest of nods. A small gesture, but from him, it bolstered her confidence more than any words could say. She stood a little straighter, daring to meet the eyes of everyone in the room, watching acceptance slowly cross their faces.

From there, it was just technicalities.

"Who will watch the twins?" wondered Daena.

"We don't need watching!" squealed Lisa. "We want to go!" cried Bud, right on her tail.

Ariesa thought about that, with a twinge of worry. She wished she could keep them safe forever… but she knew it was not to be. They were on the cusp of adulthood, and she could not shelter them forever. Besides, she felt as if they all had a role in this.

"No," she announced with her newfound confidence. "We _all_ go. Everyone in this room."

"We're all connected!" the sproutling shrieked gleefully outside.

------------------------------------

Matilda stood in the grass, beside one of the many portals to the Underworld; this one an oddly animate tree, bark contorted into a vague resemblance of a face, its eyes seeming to glow of their own will. This one just happened to be closer than most to where she wanted to see today.

Olbohn stood behind her; he had walked with her to the surface, but he had made it clear that he desired to go no further. From here on, she was on her own.

"Are you going?" he asked her. There was only the grasslands of Forcena before her, but that was not what she saw. Beyond, many thought there was nothing but ocean; but now, she knew better.

It pulled her, called to her… yet she knew that was not where she was destined to go. As much as she might desire it… it was left to others, and like many other things, she swallowed her desire, knowing it was not to be. That was part of what was called wisdom.

The Tree had its own wisdom and wants, and they could only leave Her to it now.

"No," she replied without turning. "We have knowledge, wisdom, but this is the province of imagination. We are not truly of Mana, not in the way we wish we were. It is time for those of us that call ourselves Wisdoms to stay back."

"Except for Pokiehl," Olbohn replied. "There are other reasons he will stay in, as you well know."

"Of course," Matilda replied. "It is left to him."

------------------------------------

As comforting as it was to have the others around her, Ariesa still found herself clinging to the sword in her arms as if it was a lifeline. Which, perhaps it was.

She found herself cradling it as if it was a baby, she having the oddest sort of protective instinct towards what was, in fact, merely a thing… only not. There was something more that she could not identify. She thought at first it felt of Mana, but now she was not so sure.

It felt like the Goddess.

It reminded her, in passing, of something more. _The dream_. The dream of so long ago that she had nearly forgotten, until the Sword came into her life. She wondered now – had it been the Goddess, the being she had never truly believed in, reaching for her? Was she finally remembering, needing, the way she had been told to do?

She wasn't sure she had the answers, and part of her was scared to find them.

Elazul walked up behind her, to be at her side. She did not need to be told he was there, it was the particular sense of affection she had developed that let her know even without hearing his footsteps.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked with a wry smile. "You should see the expression on your face…"

Ariesa wasn't sure how to express it herself, the dueling thoughts in her head. "Dreams are a cage, and hope is a thorn," she murmured. "Is there really anything to come of this?"

Elazul was silent for a minute, seemingly lost in thought. "We have a saying among the Jumi," he began. "Sappho was the first one to tell me. Ninety-nine percent of life is fate; the other one percent is your hope guiding you."

"Did they still say that, when the Jumi city died?" Ariesa asked pointedly. He had no answer, and she continued. "Hope, dying… everything that has happened to the world. Knowledge and its pitfall… Do you wonder about the death of the Goddess?" she asked, and he only shook his head slightly. "What happened then, what did they hope for then, before their hope died?"

Elazul looked off into the distance. "That small sliver of hope… I used to think it was a desperate attempt for the Jumi to believe when truthfully, there was nothing left. Now… after everything that's happened…" Ariesa flashed back to the Jumi city. "Maybe it's that bare sliver which still let us _feel_."

Ariesa nearly stopped in her tracks with a sudden realization. Elazul had always been the one who was struggling, aiming towards a goal most would say was hopeless… and somehow, through it all, he had never given up. She suddenly stared at him with new respect and admiration.

Spontaneously, she wiggled under his left arm, and he looked down at her in surprise. Letting the sword drop to her side, she reached up behind his head to kiss him once, twice.

He hardly resisted, but afterward, he looked at her, puzzled. She didn't say anything, and after a moment, he let it go.

That didn't mean he didn't get it. He seemed to be weighing his words carefully when he finally spoke. "I've been talking to the others…" he ventured hesitantly.

"And?" Ariesa prodded.

"They hope, still. Even Thoma. What has made you lose hope now?"

_Thoma_. She thought of something. "I need to talk to him," she murmured, and abruptly fled Elazul's grasp.

------------------------------------

Elazul wished he could run to Ariesa, but he knew she needed some space, to be alone with her thoughts in a way that he could not provide. That, he could understand. He had plenty of worries of his own; they had the Sword, the Sword he needed for the Jumi, the Sword he needed if… if he ever could be with her in the way that they both wanted. They were so close, yet so far, and his tension was mounting.

But he had another place to find comfort, and as he wandered over to his guardian, he weighed her role as well. His life, in a sense, as he was hers; the two of them lost, alone.

Only, that wasn't really true any longer.

The look she had now… it was _loss_, yes, but he had the feeling it had nothing to with him this time. Her lips were pursed, and she had a faraway expression in her eyes, that showed the depth that had started to appear.

He knew what that meant. She was remembering.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked, repeating the question he had asked Ariesa only minutes before.

She paused. "I had another name… not Blackpearl…" Pearl hung her head. "I've been so many things, but so few of them I can remember… and more than just the memories, it's the feelings I miss the most."

He didn't need to look at her face. He knew everything he needed to know through his core. Even so, her inner turmoil threatened to overwhelm him with its intensity; hope and loss, passion and pain, and a thin rivulet of love through it all, a ribbon that stood out in its purity.

Randomly, he remembered Granz once again. That was not where he had found Pearl, but it was now clear to him that was where other things had begun. He knew why he had made his choices one way rather than the other; but it nagged at him still, the choices he had made, the what-ifs and if only's. It left a crack, thin but as dangerous as the one that had previously bisected his core; a divide, between he and his guardian, a knowledge he had wanted to ignore, the truth being that they were not the same.

_And now_, he thought, sneaking a glance at Ariesa, _that crack was widening_. He didn't know if it could be bridged, and if so, how; or if there were things that would break them apart.

------------------------------------

For once, Thoma was not in the company of the twins, saving Ariesa the trouble of breaking him away. Still, it made her rather uncomfortable, as if she was intruding on his own private moment. It certainly looked that way, from the somber look on his face.

"Hey," she began, awkwardly.

He practically jumped, startled. "Oh, hi," he said, half-distracted. For a moment, Ariesa looked at him, trying to remember him as the soldier of the Empire as which she had first met him. She couldn't fit it in; all she saw was a young man, nearly as young as the twins, a young man who had seen too much.

_And I once thought that _Elazul_ looked careworn_, she thought with sympathy.

"I was wondering…" she began quietly. She knew she had to ask, but she hated to bring it up all the same. "I was wondering what you could tell me about the Empire."

"What would you like to know?" Thoma's voice was guarded, perhaps a bit fearful. It made Ariesa feel bad for even asking.

"I guess…" she began. _What did she want to know, really?_ "I mean, I know they destroyed the Jumi city. But I've heard they wanted the Mana Stones, I've heard they wanted the Sword, I've heard maybe they just wanted to conquer the world… Now, I'm wondering, what was it really all about?"

Thoma sighed. "I don't know if I have all the answers," he told her, "but I've been thinking about it… a lot. Maybe I have some ideas."

"Tell me," Ariesa encouraged in her most soothing voice.

"Well… the mission I was on… it was about trying to find the Sword. The ultimate weapon, we were told, and the Emperor wanted it; nothing else would do. The only real problem was how to find it."

"Sierra said that Deathbringer was looking for the Mana Stones, and that's how she and Larc got involved."

"I think he was… for a while. But then he was killed, you know?"

"Sierra was the one who killed him," Ariesa affirmed. "She told me the story herself."

"Well… I don't know how it happened, but the Emperor ended up being Jajara's dragoon. I mean, when I was in the bone fortress - " here he shuddered with the memory – "it was pretty clear to me who was in charge. Though, as far as the empire was concerned, thanks to Jajara, not much has really changed," he finished sarcastically.

Ariesa realized something. "It was Jajara that started looking for cores and the sword in earnest," she uttered confidently. "But I thought the dragons were good. Why would they do such a thing?"

"He wasn't hunting Jumi, if that's what you're implying," Thoma said almost defensively. "I mean, we were pretty much looking for cores that were already dead."

"So… Jajara was looking for… this. That's the jist of it, right?" Ariesa motioned to the item at her side. "And the Empire and its leader were just plain looking for power."

"As far as I know," Thoma told her. "But I wouldn't put anything past them. I kind of doubt they've given up." He looked away for a minute. "It wasn't like they told us much, but I kind of put some things together. That sword you're holding… it's not really a weapon. It's a repository of the power used to contain chaos and create Mana. So… it could create, or break things apart."

_Break things apart_. Ariesa hoped it would not come to that. "Who would want to do that?"

Thoma gave a one-word answer. "Demons."

Ariesa blinked in surprise, and he continued. "I didn't see any, but some of my friends did. They said that they were creatures of the Otherworld, and they had come to Forsena for… something. They weren't sure, and no one really wanted to suggest the Emperor had asked them there."

"The Empire. The Otherworld," she murmured, a bit fearfully. "It seems even the Goddess can't solve all of the world's problems."

Thoma looked at her with the trusting hope she had seen in his eyes when she rescued him in the Bone Fortress. "Maybe not," he told her, laying a hand on her arm, opposite from where she now held the Sword of Mana in a white-knuckled grip. "But She can always help, right?"

------------------------------------

"They call this the Royal Coastline," announced Elazul.

They were some distance west of Judd, and Ariesa felt a pang of despair. The Sword still wanted to go forward, but before her, there was nothing but ocean, as far as the eye could see.

"Which royalty?" Escad asked doubtfully. "It looks like just another beach to me."

Sierra, perhaps unsurprisingly, had the answer. "None, and all," she related. "It used to be a hub, where paths from all countries crossed." She walked along the strand, pensively. "It was the country of Rolante who named it, however, naming the east and west ends the sunrise and sunset beaches, representing past and future, cycling over and over again."

"Rolante?" Ariesa asked, startled. _Her_ country, she thought with an odd sense of pride.

"So how do we get through?" asked Lisa.

Her brother had been wandering along the water's edge, dipping in and out of the tide, leaving the edges of his sorcerer's robe quite soaked. "Ariesa…" he began. "I think you should come here."

She shrugged, and joined her young apprentice. _He's taller now_, she noticed randomly; not yet tall by any means, but enough so to remind her he was approaching manhood. And his look now was certainly not that of a child.

He looked over the ocean. "It's like an ocean, only… not," he told her. She stared hard into the distance, noting absently that the waves were soaking her boots; at least the water was pleasantly warm. "Can't you feel it?" he urged her.

_No_, was her gut response. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Elazul take a few inquisitive steps nearer to her; and slowly, a fuzzy image formed in her mind. It was something… out there, beyond, in the oblivion. Suddenly, sharply, she knew what it was.

"The Mana Holyland," she breathed. "It's out _there_."

"It is," Bud said confidently.

"How did Anise get there?" she asked, confused. "They said she built bridges."

"They weren't real bridges, not really," came the voice of Pearl. Ariesa hadn't noticed when the girl had wandered into the water, but she now stood in it thigh-deep; she didn't seem to notice that her dress was soaking wet, more so by the minute. Just like the Pearl that Ariesa had first met. "They were… sort of… a dimensional bridge. She made them with Mana. One of the only things she did that was pure." Pearl paused sadly. "I know, because I was alive then."

"I don't have any Mana," Ariesa protested, for what seemed like the thousandth time.

"You _do_," Bud insisted, motioning to the sword she held. It seemed nothing special, at first glance, but… "It's right there in your hands."

Ariesa felt doubtful. "What am I supposed to do with it?" she asked.

"We _told_ you. Create an opening in space," Lisa announced, coming up to join her brother.

"But _how_?" Ariesa insisted.

Bud sidled next to her. "Um… I kind of get it, but I'm not really sure how to explain it," he said, "but I'll try. There's like this chaos, you know, and it's disrupting the Goddess?" Ariesa nodded impatiently. "Well, She _needs_ that chaos. Right now she's scared of it, so she's hanging onto her barriers, but because she's scared… maybe that barrier is weak in spots. If you can shape it a little bit, maybe you can get through. The Goddess still has to let you close to Her, but we have to get through this first. Maybe if you just try to imagine…"

Ariesa caught her breath. _Take this sword, close your eyes, and imagine_. The words echoed in her head once again, and she let her eyelids lower – not completely, but enough that she _felt_ more than she saw. Thoughts threatened to distract her, but slowly, she let them fade away, one by one, and quiet descended over her mind. There was no sound in her head but the peaceful lapping of the waves, and no sensation other than the feeling of the sword in her hands, cold metal but a strange warmth emanating from it nonetheless.

It was that warmth she focused on, it pulsing seemingly in time with the water, the resonance at first a dull throb, but slowly sneaking in to resound in her skull, a subtle beat that drew her in, over and over again.

It seemed as if the elements themselves were creeping into her mind. Her knees threatened to give way under her, but she felt someone propping her up. _Elazul_, she noted distantly, but the Sword would not let her know more than that.

It was _there_, she realized, hidden between dimensions where the elemental spirits waited, the dimension where dragons, fairies, and all other creatures of Mana existed at the same time as in the world she knew. _The world _is_ Mana, and it is all connected,_ she realized dreamily, the pleasure of that forged connection washing over her, drifting her towards ecstasy so sweet she almost forgot what she was doing… until she realized it was happening.

Her first clue was the odd realization that water no longer coursed at her feet. Her second realization was a dim image, barely ingested, before her through her heavy-lidded eyes. Her third realization was a voice, barely recognizable as Elazul's whispering to her. "_Look_."

She _did_, and her eyes first opened slightly, then suddenly snapped wide as she realized what she was seeing.

There was ocean before them no more. The water had sunk somewhere deep within the earth – down to the Underworld, she wondered? - to leave bare sand behind, littered with sea creatures dying as they were suddenly exposed to air and sun. A strangely desolate scene, but one that gave Ariesa hope nonetheless.

It was faint, and so far away that she might have considered it an illusion on the distant horizon, but there it was, breaking up the expanse of flat land before them.

A tree.

------------------------------------

Appearances were deceiving; it was not a matter of hours, but days, that they traversed the now-empty seabed, to a tree that only grew in enormity with every step they took. And in the same way, tension built within and between the group, breaking occasionally into bickering and snarky comments before dissolving once again.

Ariesa found herself saying little, feeling only strangely moody and depressed.

Lisa was the first to get over it all, and start gazing at the rapidly-encroaching tree with the sense of wonder that is probably deserved. "Is that… the Goddess?" she wondered out loud.

"She wouldn't be all that peaceful," Escad retorted, and Daena reprimanded him sharply. "What, Daena?" he barked back, turning to face her. "Do you think we're doing anyone any services by lying? Don't you see the danger She is in?"

Daena hissed slightly, but Sierra placed one hand on her shoulder, and whispered something to her that seemed to calm the feline woman. Lisa, for her part, looked slightly wild-eyed at the thought, and Ariesa noted distantly that Bud stepped towards his sister to calm her, but Thoma reached the girl first. Bud pouted slightly, then turned and walked away.

"He's right, you know, whether we like it or not," Pearl said sadly. "There's things that are off… things that are missing, things that are there but shouldn't be. Balances out of alignment…" She shivered slightly. "Lost memories must be regained, imagination must be reinspired…" Escad started at that last.

Thoma looked suddenly backwards. "What is it?" asked Lisa, all sudden concern.

He shook his head, and turned back to her. "Nothing," he told her. "I guess, just my imagination. Maybe Pearl was freaking me out." He forced a smile. Lisa looked unconvinced.

The land slowly began to rise, now not the dried-out surface of the ocean, but obviously becoming the true Holyland. Smaller trees began to appear, first sparse, but then thicker; smaller than the Tree before them, but still lush, green things with a sense of life beyond even being alive, if that was possible. The aura of the Goddess's own forest began to permeate, settling in the skin of all, and peace and harmony settled over the group.

Well, almost.

Though Ariesa felt her mood lift, her mind was still positively swimming with thoughts, they flooding her brain as she tried to put it all together, suspecting that she had little time left to do so. _Mana_, silently echoed the word over and over, as she contemplated anything and everything that simple concept contained.

She was drawn sharply to attention by a sproutling running across her path. "The wind blew some leaves away!" it cried, only to bump directly into the sprite. She looked down at it in confusion.

To her surprise, she looked down not into the large, garish eyes that she had always associated with the things, but deep pools of knowledge. She shrank back in fear, but the gaze held her. "Listen to the wind, it tells us of the weather and the seasons," it told her very seriously.

"What do you really know?" she asked, part curious, part contemptuous.

Its feelings didn't seem to be hurt. "We all hear the wind. There are many of us, but we are all one. We are all connected. We are all what we are thinking. You, too," it finished, then ran off as quickly as it had arrived.

Ariesa gasped, and felt a bit wobbly. Sierra, nearest to her, reached out a hand, but Ariesa waved her off, choosing instead to cling to the nearest tree.

She had been so preoccupied that she had failed to notice the sun was ready to dip below the horizon; and looking towards the tree before them, she gauged there were only hours left before they would reach it. There was something in the air that frightened her… perhaps it was her own fears running away with her, but she knew, absolutely, she did not want to get any closer at night.

"Let's stop here," she suggested, receiving relieved nods all around. "Let's make sure we rest. Tomorrow - " her voice trembled slightly – "tomorrow, we greet the Goddess."

------------------------------------

Rubens hustled Diana through the Underworld, one arm around her as if he would never let her go. _Perhaps he wouldn't_, he thought, now that he had her back. He relished the sense of her against him, a precious jewel, as she had always been and would always be.

That was the way it had always been. He was the passion, and she was the healer, the caring. Despite how hard many had thought she was, that softness was there, in her core, both literally and figuratively.

Her hair trailed behind her, undone curls cascading down her back, but this time it was not for lack of care. She wore the robes of the Jumi leader, a costume that gave her presence, and the woman within had some of the iron she was known for once again. Still, there was a trace of anxiety that her lover could not fail to recognize.

"The Empire is closing in, I can feel it," she said, looking at the walls as if her eyes could bore straight through them.

"How?" questioned Rubens.

"I don't know how to explain it," Diana admitted. "But I feel as if we need every advantage we can find, before someone tries to take the Goddess from us."

_That's why we're here_, thought Rubens.

He knew his way, and he easily led her forward through the maze of caverns, warmth increasing as they descended. She did not let it touch her, nor did he. She seemed content in this moment to let him lead, and he felt bolstered by her trust in him once again.

Diana had found hope, and that was more precious than anything to him.

They were near the bottom, when Rubens spotted an unfamiliar dragon. Small, blue, and for reasons he could not explain, he was absolutely sure it was a female. She rose, gracefully spreading rippling wings, blocking their path.

"Who are you?" he asked, confused.

"I am Tiamat," she replied petulantly, "and this is my domain. For the moment. Borrowed, if you will."

Diana gasped in surprise. "You are the dragon of water," she said, curtsying gracefully. Rubens had never seen her do that before. "My esteem to you, and the element you guard."

Further to his surprise, the dragon arched her neck low to the ground, matching the Jumi's gesture. "And to you, keeper of the element of water, Guardian of Mana," she intoned. "And to you, knight of fire," she said, turning to Rubens, surprising him. "You have been to this domain, in more ways than one. I know what you seek."

"Do you?" he challenged.

"I do," she said, and stepped aside gracefully to let them pass. "Be welcome here. We are all on the same side; we will all have a role soon enough."

Diana glided serenely into the caverns beyond, now all confidence. Rubens only shrugged, and followed. The cavern into which they entered was a dead end, occupied solely by a lone figure.

No matter. That was who they had come here to see.

"Who is he?" asked Diana. Rubens did not answer, merely strode over to tap the man on the shoulder.

Larc lifted his head. "Rubens," he said. "Why would you come back to this desolate place?"

"To keep a promise to your sister."

Larc started at that, pain crossing his face. "My sister? She is well?" he asked.

"She is," Rubens replied. "And it is your duty to join her."

Diana had slowly crept behind him, and Rubens turned to wind an arm around her once again as Larc peered towards her in confusion. "This the leader of the Jumi, the Lady Diana. And my guardian," he announced proudly.

"Guardian?" Larc asked, regarding Diana quizzically, she standing firm as he looked her over. "Dare I hope that means what I think it does?"

Diana needed no further explanation. "Jumi have access to proper Mana, as you well know," she told him. "You have become… something of a creature of Mana yourself, however you became this way. With the Goddess this close… this will be easy enough."

"More or less," Larc snorted. "I'm still sort of dead, too. I need a tie to life. I have to be a dragoon to survive."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. This is the first step," Diana noted with impatience in her voice. "Hold still," she ordered curtly, and Larc, to his credit, did not argue.

She pushed him down to a kneeling position before her. Larc bowed his head humbly, fearfully, as if penitent. Rubens did not even need to look to know what was happening. It was the pain, pride, and hate, of centuries of suffering and trying to survive as a Jumi, wishes and lost hope, trying to bring life even to those who hated and scorned them, because that was what the Goddess had asked them to do. Slowly, carefully, Diana allowed all of those ugly feelings to rise up once again… and by acknowledging them, she became free.

He felt it welling, accumulating, even before he saw it. A tear, in Diana's eye; a teardrop where one had not been seen for centuries.

The first tear dripped onto Larc's fur, and he howled involuntarily, the shard of life sizzling as it hit the man who was neither living nor dead. He flinched from the next, and the next, in obvious pain, but with every drop, Rubens saw dull skin and fur becoming vibrant once again, the life and Mana spreading inside of the enslaved beastman.

Finally, Diana's last tears trickled over Larc's head, and he raised his face in wonder. The face which looked down on him was free of the frustrated hopes it held before; now, it was only determination.

"The Empire is coming," she intoned regally, and Larc nodded. "I would go myself, if I could, myself and my knight, but I feel as if we are not the ones supposed to be there."

Larc nodded. "I will go," he said, and rose to his feet.


	51. Secrets: Entrapment of love

**Author's Note: **HOWZAT for a quick update? I just felt like doin' it. Plus the chapters were nearly finished, plus I'm kind of on a roll with the story, plus… well, Meeerf has a new potential love interest (*squishy gooey*) and the chapters are called "Entrapment of Love", so why not? FYI, I personally love the Lisa scene nearly as much as the Ariesa one… it was a late add, very fresh and spontaneous, like the characters in the scene themselves…

P.S. to reviewers! Please, no review spoilers for potential readers… this chapter duo contains a MAJOR secret about Elazul, that I know you've been waiting for. Frankly, I thought I'd been leaving clues right and left, so I'm a bit surprised no one guessed it.

Next update? Prolly soon, I'm sort of on a roll… only three updates left to go. I'm both eager and sad to get this finished, hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it!

Incidentally… Not to brag… but this chapter duo BREAKS THE RECORD for longest fic in this fandom. (*feels pleased with self*) By next update, it will be the only one to cross 300K words.

Moral of the story: Any fic will be twice as long as you planned it to be.

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**51. Secrets: Entrapment of love**

"Why are we going to bury a sword in the desert, sister?" asked Loki.

Angela only smiled that smile of hers that showed that she was Definitely Up To Something. "Because I say so, brother."

Duran held back from the familiar banter between his wife and his brother-in-law. Loki was quieter, in contrast to Angela's explosive nature, both some odd synergy between their parents. But every now and then, the camaraderie between the two, even ten years apart, made it clear that they were siblings. As if the purple hair did not give it away.

He did not exactly share their jovial mood. The sword in question was his deceased father's sword, given to his father long ago by Lise's parents. History upon history, secrets and legends contained in that simple piece of metal.

Duran had no problem handing it over to his brother in law, namesake of his father, and Loki had received it with reverence for the magnitude of the gift, lifting the obsidian blade to the light and standing fascinated at the rivulets of red that swiveled within. "Ragnarok, they call this?"

"Doesn't matter," Duran replied, with a brusqueness that Loki was calm enough to not hold against him. "In any case, it was my father's fate."

The sword his father Loki had attacked the Dragon Emperor with to save Valda and Richard, the parents of his namesake. Even the death of the Dragon Emperor at his hands had never dulled the pain of that loss. His eyes flickered over at the thought of those two. Valda waited serenely, as dignified as she had ever been. Hawk had provide the introduction, and they had gracefully met with Jessica, the somewhat-queen of Navarre, who had been glad enough to provide guides out to the place they desired.

For her part, Angela seemed to understand the significance of the artifact, even though she gazed upon it differently, greedily, almost lustfully. "The secrets of today become the legends of tomorrow," she whispered, a hair too loud for her to have truly intended it to be a secret. He didn't really think it had been intended to be such.

Beyond, Duran took passing notice of King Richard, his father-in-law, pacing awkwardly. He was not the young king Duran had once idolized; he was a seventy-five-year-old man now, bearing the burden not so much of age as experience. Perhaps it was not so much the responsibility, but one thing more that kept him going.

His gaze traveled a bit further, behind the King of Forcena, to his wife. Valda, once Queen of Altena, now of Forcena, and always, ever, known as the Priestess of Mana, the more so after finding the artifacts, objects of Mana of which they were scared to tell the world. But it was enough to let him know there were secrets left to be found.

He had wondered if Angela was completely out of her head when she told him what she wanted to do here, and in a rare moment of losing his temper with her, he had shouted at his wife, yelled at her, what was she thinking? Angela, to her credit, merely bore his angry tirade until he wore down, ashamed, knowing she could have lost her temper at him just as easily.

_Goddess, she must really love him if she didn't_, he thought suddenly. Somehow, she had just waited it all out, left the room, and didn't speak to him for the next day or so, before she calmly explained what was on her mind.

"I can't explain it all, I can't remember it all, it was a dream thing," she had told him. "But I would swear on whatever Mana is left, it was important." The fervor in her eyes told him she wasn't kidding.

Angela and Loki were together scrabbling in the dirt now, as if they were childhood brother and sister instead of grown adults. "It's the right spot, I know it," Angela exulted. "No one will find it here until the right time."

"Whatever you say, sister," said Loki mildly. "I can't feel a thing of Mana anyway."

One figure, somewhat silent until now, crept closer to watch. Fairia, the only daughter of Angela and himself. She was thirteen now, and despite having hair a vivid burgundy instead of Altenan purple – some combination of he and Angela – he could already see she had the beauty of her mother and grandmother.

At least, as far as the outside world was concerned. To him, his wife and daughter had always been the most beautiful things he had ever seen.

He walked forward to stand next to Fairia, one hand on her shoulder, father and daughter merely silently observing as mother played in the dirt, standing finally to shake herself off, still mindful of her looks as she brushed off her dress. Angela never forgot her looks completely.

But sometimes she forgot her temper, as she did now. Angela snuck under his other arm, wrapping it around herself as if he would ever deny her the embrace. He had learned fully well that this gesture of trust was something he was only the few in the world to experience.

Duran stood with wife and daughter, looking at the mound that was the only indication that the sand had ever been disturbed. Across, Richard had pulled Valda to him from behind, she resting in perfect contentment there. Not an exact mirror, but the sentiment was absolutely shared, Loki stood only slightly off to the side of his parents, as a hushed silence descended over the group.

In that quiet, Duran whispered the silent goodbye to his father that he had never allowed himself before.

Angela stirred slightly, disrupting his train of thought; for a moment he was annoyed, but decided he was done thinking after all. Fairia snuggled against her father on his other side, bringing Duran fully back to the present. He knew what really mattered, what had motivated his father, what had led his father to his death – the people who mattered to him. He was with the ones he loved, and he knew he would die himself, or kill if he had to, before anything would happen to them.

He was trapped, and he found he didn't care at all.


	52. Legends: Entrapment of love

**52. Legends: Entrapment of love**

The Tree towered over them, erasing all thought when one looked at it.

At least, that's how Sierra felt. Frankly, she found it welcoming. She had far too many thoughts already; she could do with a few less.

One, of course, wouldn't go away. _Larc_. He was gone to her. It might have been easier to deal with had he simply passed on… but he had one foot in this world still.

And that meant it wasn't too late. _Or was she only fooling herself?_ Was her love trapping her, filling her with a vain hope, a petty desire, that there was no chance to be satisfied? Would the Goddess really want to do that to her?

She might not have her wants, but she did have her responsibilities still. _You must save Ariesa, _Vadise had told her; she saw that, in more ways than one. She didn't know all the ways she was supposed to do that; but she was trying her best. She could do no more; she was not the Goddess.

Still, there was something… divine… about looking after another that way, something she was beginning to understand, but she realized was probably in Vadise's very bones. Creation… it came from love, from giving, from making something more than there already was. For hundreds of years, humankind had only tried to take; and it had gotten them absolutely nowhere.

She gazed absently at the moons above, only to find them seeming to look back at her. The sensation made her fur stand on end. _They say those are the elemental spirits watching, waiting, _she reminded herself; it must have been her own fears projecting, but nevertheless, she could almost swear she could see them all, anxiously waiting for the Goddess to awaken.

Then again, perhaps they were not so unlike her and her friends. When you came right down to it, it was not just their own lives, but centuries of history that had made them who they were today.

_The moons. The spirits. _It jogged her memory; Vadise had told her once of "God-Beasts", confined by the elementals with the permission of the Goddess, their energy corralled to create the world. _"The moon complements the sun that brings life," _Vadise had also said; and Sierra wondered if that very sun would be there to greet those elementals tomorrow; or if not, what would be left.

She stared at the moons, and brooded.

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Daena hiccupped slightly. "What is in that flask, Escad?"

Her childhood friend lay in the grass next to her, looking better than her, but only slightly. "Apricat brandy," he replied. He had ingested a not-insubstantial portion himself, and it was definitely bringing some honesty out.

She lay looking at the stars for a long moment, as the brandy melted away her inhibitions. "Do you miss Matilda?" she blurted out, with no sense of propriety.

A long moment with no response from Escad, and she wondered if she had crossed unwritten boundaries despite it all. "Do you really need me to answer it?" he finally said in a half-whisper.

"I guess not," she admitted.

He stared up at the sky. "Of course I miss her. I miss her every day. But as much as I wanted to love her… it was a trap as well. Looking at the decisions I made because of it…" Escad trailed off there, not quite ready to go there. Daena wasn't really planning to push him. They let long minutes drift past, neither saying anything.

"Does my loss hurt more or worse than yours?" he asked suddenly. She sat up abruptly, bracing herself with one hand before she fell over again.

"What a strange question," she told him. "Whatever do you mean by that?"

He turned his head groggily. "I mean… I know what I wanted. But maybe I wanted it so much that I forgot about what she wanted, that there were other things she wanted. You were closer to her than anyone. If she truly loved anyone, it was you. So, which one of us suffered more when we lost her?"

She knew what he was talking about… love for passion, love for family. Love for life, love for a hundred things. "How does one choose?" she pondered out loud.

Escad did not interrupt, and she found her torrent of thoughts pouring out. "We failed, you know? We both wanted to save her, maybe even save Irwin, our friend from way back when. Now look… it's only the two of us."

Escad looked at her pointedly, and she idly wondered if she had crossed the line. "I made my mistakes," he said. "But you're right, we're the only ones left."

"Then we had better be there for each other," Daena said, playfully tugging him up.

They stumbled through the grass, drunkenly laughing, until they noticed a figure in the distance. Daena whispered a semi-mischievous idea to Escad, and they ambled over to where Sierra sat forlornly by herself.

She turned her head as the two of them approached, but they didn't give her a chance. Sierra shrieked involuntarily as they pounced on her, tumbling her to the grass. Escad… _tickled_ her, of all things, and whatever thoughts the dragoon might have been locked in were soon forcefully lost.

Laughter broke the silent darkness of the night, until they all collapsed breathless in the grass, Daena and Escad flanking Sierra, their energy infecting her despite it all. Her previously morose mood had faded, but now it returned.

"Is desire dark or light?" Sierra began.

"Same as imagination," Escad replied. "It's what you make of it." Daena looked at him in surprise. It was a sentiment she would have never expected out of the man in years gone by.

_We are not as trapped as we might think. The world is changing, _she thought to herself as she glanced over at the tree in the distance_, and we change right along with it._

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"Are you awake, Bud?" Lisa asked, prodding blankets gently.

Her twin brother mumbled. "I _was_," he replied, blue eyes opening. Eyes from their mother, as her violet eyes were from their father.

"Sorry," she responded, even though she knew there was no need to apologize. There never was between the two of them. They were all each other had. Well, not anymore, exactly, but even though Ariesa had taken them in and been like, if not a second mother, at least a big sister, there was nothing to compare to the bond twins had.

And Bud knew it, knew she hadn't woken him up for nothing. "What is it, sis?"

Lisa wasn't sure. "I'm worried," she told him. "About us, about why we're here…"

Bud sat up abruptly. "You think we're in danger?" He seemed almost excited about it.

"I don't know," Lisa admitted. "We've never been out like this on an adventure, with Ariesa…"

"You went to Geo," he pointed out.

"Well… yeah, but it wasn't quite like this. I mean, we were just looking for something then. Now…" she looked over at the Tree. It gave her kind of weird feelings, like she wanted to run to it, but she was also afraid of it. "There's nothing like this, not anywhere in the world."

"It will be alright," Bud said in that tone that meant he didn't necessarily believe it, but wanted desperately for her to feel better, and somehow that was enough.

Lisa nodded absently. She was trying to picture the future, but it wasn't coming together in her head, so she found herself thinking of the past instead. "Do you remember where we were before Domina?" she asked, turning to her brother.

Bud scrunched up his face, pondering. "We were in Topple for a bit," he recalled. "Remember how we used to do goofy magic tricks for money?"

Lisa laughed despite herself. "It kept us going," she reminded him. "Although now, I figure people just gave us money because they felt sorry for us."

"Then it all worked out, huh? Good thing we don't have to do that anymore." Bud's silly grin suddenly fell. "You know the advice Gaeus gave me? About Jumi knights, and Halciet, the mage lost to history, and things?"

"We _studied_ Halciet," Lisa reminded him. "You just never went to class." Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed one of those bizarre sproutlings waddling by, wondering what it was doing out at his time of night.

"Eh, there were too many details in those history classes. I liked the lab exercises better." Lisa thought of mentioning how many of those lab experiments had resulted in explosions, but a wry glare from him said he knew what she was thinking, and warned her not to bring it up. "But that's not really the point I was making. I was just wondering if I'm really going somewhere."

"We could go back to school," she suggested.

"You could," he told her. "But even if they'd let me, I'm not too sure I want to. I have to figure out what I like."

"I like moss growing!" the sproutling abruptly screeched. "I like birds and insects!" It swiveled its head furtively. "It's kind of dark here, and the ground is wet, but I like it," it announced , before tearing into the shadows once again, Lisa already dismissing it from her mind to return to the topic at hand.

"What else would you do?" she asked, suddenly very sad. She had always assumed that wherever she was going, he would be going to. It had been that way for so long, that it hadn't really occurred to her that things might not always be that way.

"Dunno," Bud replied. "Go somewhere. Whatever I want to do. Well, we have a while to figure things out. Ariesa too," he added helpfully.

"Does she?" Lisa asked, and for once Bud didn't say anything funny in return. He was trying to keep it light, but really, she knew that tree bugged him as much as it did her. And Ariesa was mixed up in it all, for better or for worse.

All this time, the tree had been growing up, and so had they. Just when most of their problems had been solved, adolescence had brought them a whole new set of urges and desires. Nothing would ever change the love the twins had for each other, but, she realized, but that love was going to have to sometimes step aside and share space.

It was starting to be that way already for her, and she knew Bud didn't like it. But, he'd have to deal with it.

Speaking of… Thoma stirred from where he had been sleeping, not far from them, and Lisa turned her head involuntarily. He seemed to be more comfortable with them than any other, even though he had been a soldier and probably seen a lot more than they had seen at the Magic Academy.

She walked over, and prodded him slightly. His eyes snapped open fearfully, but softened as he saw who had awoken him, and he let her pull him to a sitting position. Bud plopped down a couple feet away.

The three of them chattered together, until some lights distracted Lisa in the distance. The snap of Bud's head showed they had grabbed his attention as well. "Look!" she breathed, taking the excuse to grab Thoma's arm.

"What?" he asked, puzzled.

"Fairies. Lots of 'em." Bud replied.

Thoma looked left and right, squinting. "I don't see anything."

"It's okay," Lisa said soothingly. "Maybe you have to be able to do magic to see them."

"Well, that would explain it. I've only ever been a fighter. The Empire's not big on using magic, at least for the ordinary people – who knows what the Emperor does."

"You know, it's really cool you were a soldier. Doing something," Bud told him.

Thoma frowned. "It's not all that." He scooted slightly closer to Lisa, but still a respectful distance away, and oddly she found herself thinking she wished he would get even closer.

"Whatever." Bud rolled over and went back to sleep. Lisa didn't mind; Thoma was good company enough.

They chatted for a while, talking about minor, unimportant things; Lisa found it pleasantly distracting. "You should try taking out that ponytail," he suddenly said teasingly.

"No!" she said, laughing, but he reached for her nevertheless. She jumped up and away from him, and he grinned as he went running after her.

It might have been well after midnight, but Lisa didn't care. All fatigue had left her as the two young people ran through the fields, squealing with delight, among plants that seemed more alive than any they had seen before. She was lighter, and had the agility of the elves; but he had been trained by hard military service, and eventually he caught up to her. He reached for her, and as she playfully tried to break free, pulling them both to the ground. She fell on top of him with a thud, but he did not free her from his grip.

"Now, about that ponytail," he said, and though she pretended to resist, she really didn't as he reached out to pull the tie out of her hair. Purple waves flopped out, and suddenly Thoma stopped laughing.

Lisa, concerned, pulled herself off him, and sat cross-legged. He rose himself, but he didn't stop looking at her. "Your hair… it's really long."

It _was_, she realized. She was used to it barely grazing her shoulders, but it now flowed to nearly halfway down her back. "Yeah," she giggled nervously. "I don't know when I last bothered to cut it. I mean, I usually don't care that much." _Great, that sounds ridiculous_, she mentally slapped herself.

"No – ah, that's not what I meant at all. It's really pretty," he told her, and Lisa finally met his eyes nervously. "_You're_ really pretty," he said quietly, his eyes traveling down over her, over parts of her body that had changed in the time since she had come to live with Ariesa, parts she had never really noticed – until now.

The way he looked at her kind of made her nervous and kind of made her interested all at the same time. "Stop looking at me," she teased, and he dropped his eyes, but suddenly looked terribly sad and embarrassed. Lisa suddenly felt awful.

She leaned forward, placing one hand under his chin. "I'm sorry," she told him gently. "That's not what I meant." She practically breathed a sigh of relief when his eyes met hers again, but he didn't say anything.

She wanted him to say something. She didn't know _what_, but she did. Maybe it was the simple desire to get him moving that generated the sudden, mad impulse, to do what she did next.

She leaned forward, and kissed him. On the _lips_.

His eyes widened in surprise; but he didn't really pull away. He wrapped his arms around her awkwardly, kissing her back.

He wasn't very good at it. _He hasn't done this any more than I have_, Lisa thought a bit smugly. But a little time, and practice… as the moons drifted across the sky, they started to figure it out.

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She sat by herself. She wanted it that way.

She was Blackpearl, now, making the choice to switch, but she still didn't know exactly how she did it. It was in her core, but there was past, and other things she couldn't explain. She just knew it worked.

There were few opportunities to do so. This side, this self, was something she kept hidden. Though, for the moment, it seemed appropriate… and in this form, she remembered _more_. More than she wanted to.

It was the moons that drew her back to this form… her _true_ form, she wanted to think, but really, was that all there was to it? She was no more one single form than were the moons themselves. It became whatever it needed to. As always had she, splitting off bits and pieces of herself, shaving away until… what?... was left.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a sproutling skittering, but paid it little mind. _The moons. _She could barely remember a time when there was one ,maybe two, but never six; but now, it seemed the element of Moon had gained strength as had the element of Tree. The element of Tree might be closest to the Goddess; but the moon that was the one that balanced it. The moon was needed as well to reveal the Goddess, outlining her in shadow, negative space identifying Her by absence; the moon was change, reversion, reemergence into life. _Opposites were powerful – if they did not destroy each other first. _Perhaps that had been the lesson of the last thousand years. People hoping to create a future, but it was not theirs to declare; no matter what they believed, the future was neither peace nor nightmare. It just _was_.

Yells and shrieks crept through the woods, but of fun, not danger, and she ignored them. Nevertheless, their sheer exuberance of youth infected her, and made her want to reach back, back before she was Jumi, back to a past she could not remember, not in the way she felt like she should.

It wasn't surprising; the nature of the moon was nothingness.

"We've got no souls, you know!" the sproutling suddenly chirped, as if echoing her thoughts.

"Whatever do you mean?" Blackpearl leaned forward, suddenly intrigued.

"Everyone with a soul always disappears!" the thing announced happily. "We don't have souls, so we always stay." It turned to her, and Blackpearl _gasped_, suddenly taken with a feeling of… enormity, connection, universality? Vocabulary faded before she could truly identify the sentiment, and the moment as well.

She shook her head to clear it, and the sproutling skittered off. _Connection, _she contemplated. _It was there…. _but to what, how, why… those things she could not answer, and let the memory fade as so many others before it.

She looked at the six moons as if for confirmation, casting their light over the great tree before them. They said the moons were spirits watching, waiting. And for once, Blackpearl thought, "they" just might be right.

_If all goes well_, she thought, _this might be the last night they are waiting_… as for every other creature of the Goddess.

She wanted that more than she could say.

Her memories felt… reshaped? It puzzled her, disturbed her, just plain frustrated her… but ultimately, it was something that she had to accept, even as she wondered not only what thoughts, but what _feelings_ she might have lost. _There must have been love in her past_, she thought. _What did she love now_, she wondered? She had told Elazul the Jumi were love, but every love she had seemed to trap her more. The family she had lost trapped her with their memories. The Jumi she had initiated trapped her in her responsibilities. And the things she wanted trapped her in dark imagination. If she could let go of her desire… but it was not so.

It would never be so, as long as she was alive. That was what life was, she realized, sinking once again into the sensations of the moon and the tree before her.

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Ariesa had been lost in the depths of dreamland, when a touch brought her to wakefulness once again. She opened her eyes to see Elazul, agitated, his blue eyes boring into her own.

"Come with me," he whispered. _Why_, she wanted to ask. But she didn't need to. She had learned long ago that while Elazul might not say what he meant, it was always readable in his eyes, now more than ever.

_Come with me. Because I need you._

So she said nothing, and followed him. He seemed to want nothing more than just to get away, traveling into the forest, it becoming increasingly lush the deeper they got. She could hear voices from their campsite, some of her friends unable or unwilling to go to sleep, but with time, gradually they faded, until it was just the two of them, alone.

"What's on your mind?" she asked him softly, as he had asked her earlier that very day.

"Death," he began. "Death hanging over our heads."

Something in his voice gave her chills. "Whatever do you mean?"

He looked at her, slightly haunted. "I didn't want to tell you, after all you've done. But the survival of the Jumi depends on this."

"The Jumi are safe," she said, puzzled.

"For the moment," he told her, softly, slowly. "But… can't you see?" His voice gained a tone of agitation. "Until Mana returns… we are still in danger. And so are you."

"Me?" she asked quizzically.

"Yes." He looked at her with longing. "Maybe you most of all. And it's all my fault. I promised myself I would never do this, never tell you these things, but… it's even harder not to say them." She took a few steps closer to him, he reaching to pull her closer yet. "I've given up so many things that I wanted, but now I wonder if there's anything left." He gripped her suddenly, roughly, practically squeezing the breath out of her. "I don't know if I can go any further without you," he practically whispered; and Ariesa randomly wondered if he meant literally or figuratively.

His warmth was so familiar; yet somehow, he seemed a stranger as well. _It's that damned tree, _she thought; _it's changing us all, whether we like it or not. _But in this case… she found she liked it. She liked it very much.

"I need you," he finished, but belying his words, he suddenly stepped back, leaving her standing alone, and slightly stunned. His eyes were wide, as if in shock, as if he couldn't comprehend the things he said. She hated that, but like it or not, she _understood_. The moment had ended; it had become too much. It had to begin again.

She stepped cautiously forward this time, afraid to move too fast, and quietly waited, until he reached for her himself. His touch on her arm was awkward, unpracticed, as if he had never kissed or touched her before. She slid into that touch, he easing up reluctantly as she squiggled into the crook of his left arm, gently easing up against him with none of the ferocity they had only moments before.

Still, it made little difference how slowly they had arrived there, now that they were there. Her body was pressed against his, close, very close; she could feel everyone of his breaths, and his core pressed against her shoulder, not far from her heart. Idly, she wondered what happened if a Jumi stopped breathing, if the heart stopped beating; would the core lead the body on by itself?

But the Jumi next to her was still well and truly alive, his heart pounding with her closeness. Even so… it wasn't close enough for her.

She reached to his right shoulder, he automatically pulling the crystal arm away from her. Decisively, she reached forward once again, and he let her go to grab her fist. She looked up at him, slightly hurt.

"Don't," he told her. "Just... I don't want you to touch there..." It was the first time he had ever admitted out loud there was something different about that arm, though obvious for all to see.

She paused. "I already have," she whispered.

"When?" he asked, surprised.

She had never told him before. "It was in Mekiv," she began. "You were slipping in and out of consciousness, your core was cracked and you were barely clinging to life…" She wanted to cry with the memory. "I didn't know what to do – Daena and the twins had gone for help, and it was just you and I. I couldn't think of anything except to stay close to you, and I grabbed your hand…" She trailed off.

Elazul looked at her, almost incredulous. "So that's the way it goes."

"I'm sorry," she told him.

"No," he said gently. "Don't be. Maybe… maybe it was you that kept me alive."

"How do you figure?" she wondered.

He hung his head. "Because…" She moved her hand from his shoulder down his arm, but only allowing the barest whisper of a touch to graze the crystal, like the beating of a fairy's wings. He resisted her no longer. She reached his palm, and then those same fingertips slid between the stone fingers of his right hand, entangling with them, those warm-yet-cool appendages intertwined with hers. Elazul took a deep, pained breath.

"Does it hurt? Is it dead? Can you feel the same?" she asked worriedly; though the part of her that was experienced with men knew quite well that he was feeling… something else altogether.

"Not at all," he replied. "I feel… far too much. It wasn't what I had hoped for, but... It's like the core, now."

Ariesa only gripped him for a long moment; but slowly, surely, she felt a slender beating of the core she had sensed in the Mekiv caverns, when it seemed nothing but sheer willpower was keeping him alive. And slowly, it seemed to her, she could feel that same power beating not only through his core, but through his arm, his body, through _her_.

_Was this the power of Mana?_

Elazul relaxed slightly, as if they had settled into the moment… and then become frozen in it. Neither could move forward… but at the same time, there was no going back.

"How did you get it?" Ariesa finally asked. It was something she had always wondered.

Elazul sighed. "I've never told anyone, not even Pearl," he began. "But if anyone needs to be told, it's you."

"Oh?" she asked, relaxing a little, but not letting him go. He took a deep breath, and began.

"It was a while before I found Pearl," he started. "I wasn't old enough to have some pride in being a Jumi. That came later. All I knew is I was a young man adrift, sworn to protect, no other purpose, yet with nothing to direct towards. I was a knight, but I had no guardian.

"Sappho had sent me to the desert, but I had no idea what I was supposed to find, or how long it would take. I'm not sure how long I was there – Jumi don't really recall time the same way, you know. But it was long enough that I had not only lost track of time; I had lost track of my purpose.

"One night, I was holding my sword in my hand, and suddenly I was angrier than I had ever been before. _What do I even have this for,_ I asked myself. But unlike you, I didn't want to throw it away. I wanted to throw _myself_ away, end it all.

"I don't know exactly how I did it. I opened my core to… something. Or closed it? I'm not sure. All I know is, _stone_ took over, simple earth, devoid of life. I watched the crystal begin to creep up my arm, warm flesh turning to cool mineral, and it seemed appropriate. Ending the same way I began, becoming part of rock.

"It reached to my shoulder, and I could almost feel it pulsating with my core, like life and death. And I knew, once I let it reach the core, that was it, and I looked at it happening almost detached. This was something I had never asked for, anyway.

"I gave into it, and I felt half-conscious when suddenly, it was like something _sparked_ inside my core. And I can't tell you where it was. It wasn't the desert, it was cold and snowy, some secret place I must have been, because I remembered it despite being sure I had never seen it. There was a beautiful woman."

"A woman?" Ariesa asked, amused.

It broke his mood slightly, and she saw the barest trace of a grin. "A woman. And one with presence. Beautiful, in a maroon dress, and long purple hair. And she had some things to say to me..."

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_Angela was dreaming, she knew. It must have been from playing with that lamp. The thing always put her somewhere else, somewhere in the memories of Mana, where she could imagine things the way they wished they could be._

_Vaguely, she sensed a man tossing and turning next to her. She knew that was _Duran_, her husband… but rapidly he was receding far from where she knew she found herself._

_The snow out here was cold. It didn't surprise her, Altena city was as cold nowadays, when one went outside; it was only inside the city buildings one could still find warmth._

_She only hoped it could last._

_She knew this hill, from her mother's stories. This was the point where her mother had seen her nightmarish visions of Altena dying, so long ago, when she herself was only a little girl. She had thought the danger to Altena had been past when the Dragon Emperor died, when the Archdemon was killed; but now she wondered about the strange sequence of fate where the solution had been a part of a number of new problems, leaving her frustrated and bereft._

_She looked at the snow-covered hill, wondering if someday that would be all that was left of her country._

_And _why_, she wondered suddenly, was there a _man_ lying there?_

_Crunching through the snow, disregarding the moisture seeping into her royal cape, Angela walked over to kneel down before the stranger. There was something about him, the whisper of Mana that she knew from the objects her mother studied. But to sense it coming from another person… _

_She had no idea what to make of it, but she knew she couldn't leave him alone._

_He was in the middle of nowhere, freezing to death in a bitter Altenan winter. His entire right arm was frostbitten, the skin a bluish gray, and she cringed, wondering if that arm was going to be lost._

_She touched the arm experimentally, and recoiled as she realized it was not cold at all, but _warm_, warmer than the rest of his flesh was, lying there in the snow. She braced herself, and this time placed a full palm on the man's arm, to feel the heat within. Not frostbite at all. Stone. And warm stone. Maybe more than that. She probed a little, with a skill she had almost forgotten with disuse, and - _

_The young man sat up with a jolt, and opened his eyes._

_Angela stumbled back to a seated position in shock. Those eyes... piercing blue... They were her daughter's eyes. And that meant her eyes, as well…. But the color, that was Duran's._

_The young man looked just as confused, pushing blue-green bangs off his face with the remaining flesh and blood hand. He frowned irritably; the expression was as if Angela was looking into a mirror. "Who are you?" he half-asked, half-demanded. "Where is this?"_

"_Queen Altena's Hill," she replied._

"_Where I was born. Or so I'm told." He leaned back to prop himself up on the stone arm. "Does that make you my mother?"_

"_No. I have only one child, a daughter," she replied, thinking of the thirteen-year-old girl as asleep as she hoped she herself was. "But... you could almost be my son. _Our_ son. I can see Duran in you as well."_

_He looked away. "Who? No matter. Well, maybe my mother looks something like you."_

"_Maybe," Angela conceded. "But… anyway… there was something that pulled me here…" she continued._

_The young man snorted. "Probably this thing," he said, pulling his shirt slightly open, and Angela gasped despite herself._

_The stone… it was a bit of Mana Stone. It could be nothing else. But it was clearly embedded in his skin._

_She reached for it involuntarily, and just as instinctively, he grabbed her wrist, pulling it away. "Don't!" he cried, then recovered. "Please," he added._

_Angela pulled her hand back, but curiosity still reigned. "What is that?"_

"_A Jumi core," he told her, but her look was blank. "Whatever. Maybe you don't know about it. Doesn't matter."_

"_Is it like this?" Angela asked, tapping one finger on his crystal arm, he flinching. She narrowed her eyes, irritated. "Let me see it," Angela said, part soothing, part insistent. Reluctantly, he let her take his hand, pulling his arm from the ground to run her hand over it._

_Even as she examined it, he looked at it with curiosity himself. "I remember what it felt like as mere flesh," he said cautiously. "But it's weird, it doesn't really feel any heavier. I figure I could swing a sword with it just as easily."_

"_Who are you anyway?" she asked._

"_Elazul," he told her. "How about you?_

_The queen of Altena. The carrier of the Fairy who would become the Goddess. The last Black Magus. She could have told him she was any one of a hundred such things, but she only wanted to be the one. "I'm Angela," was all she said."What is this? How did it happen? I've never seen anything like it."_

"_It's my death," Elazul grinned ironically. "Or at least, I meant it to be. That's all the Jumi ever will be. I just wanted to join them, instead of fighting all the time."_

"_Why would you want to die?" Angela asked, puzzled._

"_I wanted a guardian," he said._

"_What's that?"_

"_Well I suppose if you don't know about Jumi, you wouldn't know about that," he said. "Something, some _one_, to guard. The last bit of Mana. Only, there are none left to protect."_

_Angela ran her fingers along his arm, a nearly-forgotten part of her thoughts focusing once again. "Well, if you wanted to die, you got pretty screwed, buddy. This arm has more life than you could imagine, now. If only I could heal…"_

"_Doesn't matter. There is nothing left," Elazul insisted._

"_Nothing _left_?" Angela burst out. "After all we have been through to make sure _something_ remains, after all we have tried to do, trying to find something to keep us going in a world without Mana?"_

"_Mana. What a curse." He grunted._

_Angela felt an old fire, and old temper, within her. "You think so?" She found her voice raising. "Mana is _everything_, it is life itself! What I wouldn't give to have some of it again! And you have it right here…" Her finger had slithered towards the core unbidden, before he could stop her. It sprang to life as if the Goddess itself recognized it, and she felt a rush familiar from so long ago, her spirit grasping for it, and to find it drifting away from her once again. But even though she could not reach it, it still resided in the gemstone before her._

_It brought up feelings she had buried out of necessity. Innocence giving way to guilt as she had wondered where to go next, then losing that once again in favor of hope and acceptance, finally culminating in a fire of desire to survive._

We were the angels, the saviors_, she wondered randomly; but _look at what we wrought_. Still; she had no regrets; and here, like that lamp, like that book, like the things that bore the barest traces of what once _was_, her was a bit of Mana, one that belonged to a human in a most intimate way. "I wish I could say I did that, but that's not from me," she gasped, entranced with the pure Mana before her. No memory, no artifact, but simple purity. "How is it you have even come by such a thing? How is this even possible?" _

_Elazul shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "It's just always something I've had to deal with. Part of being Jumi."_

"Jumi_," Angela repeated the unfamiliar word. She didn't know who, or what, a Jumi was, but one thing was clear. If they were all like Elazul… they had the power of Mana inside themselves, the power of the old Goddess encased in a human soul. He might be flippant about it, but she knew how important it was. "Don't give up on the… Jumi," she told him, her tone becoming pleading. "Don't give up on Mana."_

_Elazul sighed. "Can I give up on the Jumi, even if I am the last?" he wondered out loud._

"No_!" Angela answered for him. "It is too precious, too rare, to ever take for granted. You have a gift, a privilege, even if you don't like it."_

"_But how can a life be valuable, if it does not give to someone else?" he wondered._

_Angela thought of the selfish, spoiled person she had once been. She hadn't changed that much… but she had learned to become someone, to grow into herself. "You will, with time," she assured him. "Don't lose your chance to connect, to care; that is the will of the Goddess. Promise me you won't give up the chance to find that. Do not get split off from the future."_

_He looked at her strangely. "I promise," he told her; slowly, but he did._

_She grasped that hand of living stone firmly, only to find the dream spiraling away, and she returning to what was real once again._

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"…and I realized there was something I couldn't give up. I opened myself to Mana once again, and it stopped, but left me with this." He removed his hand from Ariesa's to shake a fist in the air. "Nothing but a piece of stone."

"But it still feels, you said?" Ariesa asked, confused.

Elazul barked a laugh. "Well, you see, I screwed that one up. If I died, all my feelings would die, to be stored in stone, the way Diana did. But since I kept on living… it feels more than ever."

He reached to the sword, still in the scabbard at his waist. "Every move I make with this… I feel."

"It's better not to think about it, sometimes," Ariesa said. "Your thoughts, your feelings… they _are_ your actions… and vice versa." She reached for his hand, and gently guided the sword back into its home. His hand slipped free of the hilt, and she allowed her fingers to graze his for a moment, his hand like stones gently warmed by the sun. Not flesh, but not dead - not in the least.

"What do you feel... here?" she pressed, her hand sliding up to grab just below his elbow.

He turned away shyly. "I feel... too much," he replied. "You can tell. I don't need to tell you."

She could. "Why bother hiding it, then?" she asked, gently tugging his right arm around her own waist.

He settled into the embrace uncomfortably at first, she letting her weight rest against his arms, now wrapped loosely around her. The expression on his face showed the sheer intensity of his feeling, pleasure and pain mixing into a contorted expression. Suddenly she realized he had never before held her in both arms this way, always trying to keep that edge of distance that refused to let him embrace her fully for fear he would feel the entirety of his emotions. It lent her both intense tenderness and unaccountable anxiety; he was _holding_ her, he was holding _her_…

She met his eyes, and they pierced into her with an intensity she had never seen before, an intensity she had not thought possible. She took a shallow step closer, and to her surprise, he leaned forward, his head touching hers lightly. "Is it... could it be..." she ventured.

His eyes closed gently, as if to focus all his attention on the words that came out of his mouth. "Love," he whispered.

Her eyes brimmed with tears slightly, but she blinked them down forcefully, unsure if they were safe. He noticed, though, and as she tilted her head expectantly, he suddenly jerked away from her, though still holding her hand.

"What are you doing?' she asked. "Why won't you get closer?"

"I don't know if I can," he told her, slowly, awkwardly.

"Why not?" she half-cried. "You just said it. I love you, and you love me. We're in _love_, Elazul, why won't you let it happen?!"

"Because..." He paused, swallowing as if he had meant to say something, then decided to say something else entirely. "Ariesa… it's never happened before."

"What do you mean?" Ariesa replied - then caught his meaning. "You haven't? _Never_?"

"Never," he told her, with the faintest hint of a blush. "Ariesa... being a knight, my guardian, Pearl, that's all there's ever been for me." He looked away for a moment. "I don't know how to let anyone else in."

"Pearl won't be your guardian forever," she told him, not realizing how badly that stung until she saw his expression. Softening her tone to the gentlest possible, she continued. "I mean, things are changing, Elazul. We barely know who we are today, and we have no idea what might happen tomorrow."

He turned his head; he looked her in the eye. His left hand reached around to her neck, and pulled her hair forward, the thick locks spilling now over her shoulder. Slowly, gently, he pulled the sticks that secured it in place. First, the thin curled ones at the base, leaving her hair feeling suddenly uncomfortably disarrayed. Instinctively, she pulled fingers through it to smooth it, but Elazul already was reaching to remove the sticks at the top to let the rest of her hair fall, free at last.

She felt suddenly very... exposed, of all things, until the comforting feeling of her hair ornaments was replaced by fingers entangling themselves within. His left hand stroked golden waves; his right caressed the skin of her shoulders and upper back, his touch treating her body almost reverently.

"Soft," he whispered, "so unlike stone..."

"You're not a stone," she told him. She touched only one finger to his core. That was enough to send a shiver through him. "It's like life itself, here." He looked at her with a longing that matched what she felt through that jewel.

Still, she sensed a hint of resistance in his touch. "Ariesa," he told her, pronouncing her name like a foreign word uncomfortable on his tongue, "I can't. I can't allow anyone to get this close to me." He was a little wild-eyed, panicked and overwhelmed, and though she was not without sympathy, she was still a little puzzled. After all they had been through, how could he continue to deny the truth?

"It's already too late," she said decisively. She inched ever closer to him, letting the warmth of her own body touch his, brushing her bare skin against his core; and though he tried to tug away, this time she wasn't giving up without a fight. Her face tilted up to his, their lips very close; she wasn't much shorter than him, after all. He tried to avoid her eyes, but she knew, for once it was her brown-eyed gaze pulling him in, until blue orbs were focused on her once again.

There was everything in those eyes… panic, fear, anger, doubt, and underneath it all, the thing she knew she would find. His face was close, close enough that she wanted to pull him near to kiss him… but didn't dare to make that final move. He only stared for the longest moment… and slowly, they both forgot everything.

"Goddess help me," he whispered, and pulled her face to his.


	53. Secrets: Knowledge and its pitfall

**Author's Note: **It occurred to me when putting together chapters 53 and 55 that both are highly anecdotal, and that if I was producing this as a single piece of work instead of something more serialized, I might have laid it out a little differently… Well, anyway. A little about this chapter (and the comments apply to chapter 55 as well). The titles were actually created before the chapters were written. The scenes are meant to illustrate the themes expressed by the titles, and also to fill in some of the history gaps – this is what was happening about the time of Anise's and Anuella's wars, but away from the fighting. I also thought it might be fun to explore what, exactly, happened to Altena and Rolante, both of which are obviously gone by the time of Legend of Mana, and as we all now know, are the ultimate homelands of Elazul and Ariesa. Hope it's easy enough to follow.

Enjoy! Only two updates left!

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**53. Secrets: Knowledge and its pitfall**

It was rare nowadays that Richard's health allowed him to travel with his wife, and Valda treasured the fact that he had come to Pedan with her this time, more so for knowing that he was there mostly to be with her. They were getting to the age where they had no way of knowing how much more time they might have together, and they found themselves making the most of what they had.

She valued his input on her research, as he valued hers on a hundred other things. He had always had a sharp and politically skilled mind, and brought a different perspective to the artifacts she had been studying, catching on to their possible impact with only the barest of explanations on her part.

"So there is Mana to be found," Richard mused. "What can we expect to happen with that?"

"I don't know," Valda admitted. "I know so much about these things, but not what might become of them. But… it frightens me. I wonder if the world would be better off had we nothing to fall back on at all."

Richard stroked his chin, considering, and walked to the window to gaze at Pedan outside. "I see what you mean. War. Destruction. Death. We've seen what the world will do for the powers of Mana; why should now be any different?"

Valda felt a chill, and walked over to her husband, sliding underneath his arm for the comfort of his embrace, her eyes following his. "The people of the world think simple Mana will be enough; they do not know. They do not understand it, they cannot imagine what to do with it." Beyond was visible the jungle; the Jungle of Illusion, it was called.

The Stone of Darkness had been in that jungle, Angela had told her; and Valda had eventually reasoned it out. Pedan had been a center of magic for a thousand years, the source of its power shrouded in mystery. She wondered, now, if the city had gained a little bit of the Goddess herself, of Her darker, chaotic power from the Stone; connections to reality here seemed somehow… broken, bent, she wasn't sure… but it was as if Pedan sat somehow at the border within dimensions.

_Knowledge had its dark side_, she realized, able to split people apart as easily as it could join… and she could only hope that people, left to their own devices, without the Goddess, could make those choices wisely. "It's for that that the world and our lives exist," she whispered.

"For what?" Richard inquired, turning his attention to his wife with a gentle kiss on her forehead. She smiled despite herself.

"It doesn't matter," she told him, feeling him rest his weight against her gently.

They stood together for a long time like that, until Valda realize he was not just leaning on her lightly, his whole weight was pressing against her. Alarmed, she turned… only to see his eyes, glazing over slightly, as he slumped to the floor.

She grabbed him with all her strength, but he was far heavier than she herself was, and she only found herself pulled on top of him. Horrified, she looked as his expression faded in and out of consciousness, and she grabbed his face forcefully, willing him not to leave her yet.

It did not work, but a moment of clarity crept into his eyes. "Valda," he whispered hoarsely, "I knew what love was with you…"

That was all, and as his eyes closed, all that was left was her sobs echoing out the window and over the buildings of ancient Pedan.

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Fairia shivered in the snowfields, and she wondered if it was only from the cold. Her grandparents were long gone; her mother had been lost only a handful of years before, making her Queen of Altena, with responsibilities she could never have predicted or hoped for.

Shivering in Altena was a fact of life now. It was her duty as the queen to check on the generators that provided power to the Altenan kingdom; but she had begun to feel as if it was absolutely pointless. Their technology was enabling them to survive, yes, but Altena would never be what it once was; only the most important cities of the kingdom had any hope of survival, and that only barely. Idly, she wondered if the elemental spirits were still there, if in hiding, if they were gone altogether.

She did not know. In any case, it meant humankind had only itself to rely on.

Technology was helpful, yes, but only so much to a society that had depended on magic for all of its history. She worried less for the country itself than for the individual people, struggling to survive. And she was one of those herself, fearing for her family. Her first grandchild, Anise, was a toddler now; and her own third child Artemis was expecting her first offspring soon enough.

If only they had known… so much they took for granted… They knew a million things that helped them not at all, because now forces outside had reshaped which knowledge mattered and which didn't.

Altena was suffering. That was the simple fact of things.

Shayla stood beside her in silent accompaniment. Carlie's daughter looked young still, barely half her forty-odd years, and reminded her of the luxuries of youth.

"I wish there was something that could be done," Fairia confessed. She watched Anise playing in the garden of icicle flowers. She had some of the fire of her great-grandmother, something that once was everything that Altena needed, but now… realistically, Fairia wondered if there was anywhere that might lead her.

Shayla pondered that. "I have no answer," she admitted. Fairia had expected that. Her people were trickling away, first mixing with the elves, and then beyond, wherever they could find peace in this world her mother had hoped so much for. It was called the "Altenan exodus," and Fairia wondered if she was holding on to nothing.

Still, she could not deny them their chance, as she bid goodbye to a small party. If they thought Altena was ending… everyone deserved to search for a new beginning, for the descendants of Altena to awaken its passion and power once again.

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Leires touched her hand to the window, the pane bearing the cold of outside even as she could feel the warmth of the fire on her back. She stood there for a long minute, pondering the difference, cold, hot, cold, hot.

Behind her, Yurian was shuffling papers or other such bureaucratic matters; mundane practicalities were now the nature of their kingdom, largely under the thumb of stronger Forcena. Fortunately, thus far Forcena's rule had been gentle with their kingdom, and for that she was grateful.

Not that it would matter in the end. These were only kingdoms, she knew; and if those kingdoms died, people would simply be born somewhere else. It was circumstance, nothing more. It was not what really mattered.

She heard her husband's voice. "Are you happy, my queen?"

Leires turned from the window to respond. "Of course, my love." She did not smile, but her husband grinned in response, a big, slightly wolfish grin.

She rarely smiled. It didn't matter; he knew how to read her eyes. But she had always found it difficult to get out of her head enough to express any sort of serious emotion; there were too many thoughts that would not let her get away. "Happy" was a relative term, of course. As long as she stayed in her small corner of the world, she supposed she was. But she could not free herself from her thoughts of the rest of the world.

Things changed. Her husband changed. He was aging far more rapidly than she herself was, in their forty-odd years of marriage. She accepted that, as she a number of other things she could do nothing about; but there were a few she wished she could.

Altena, for one. What was called the "Altenan Exodus" had been going on for years, since Angela passed on to become part of Mana, as all did in the end. But there was one slim hope the country thought it still had – as long as Anise was alive, no matter what she was doing, they thought there still was a chance.

The citizenry of Altena barely seemed to care that she had tried to destroy the Tree itself nearly thirty years before, so desperate were they becoming for survival. As long as Anise was alive, they would cling to that hope; and Leires knew that in a bitter irony, once the sorceress was gone, no matter how twisted her intentions… so was Altena. The queen would try to keep her country together as long as she could; but the simple fact of things was, the country depended on powers that no longer existed. Decline was a slippery slope.

But even more than that, it was Forcena which worried her most. A country once based on the righteousness of its knights, its code of chivalry, now becoming ever more warlike. It knew war far too well, in fact, joining the side of the fairies to push back the mages, tearing old alliances asunder.

The map of the world was changing, as the countries of a bare century before changed, thrived or suffered, with every piece of new knowledge that came to light. Change was never easy, the clearing of the past to create the future; not even the Goddess herself was exempt. "Progress" was a fickle thing, sometimes more trouble than it was worth. Sometimes, it meant preserving things that could be used for ill. The hope of those who had lived in the age of the ancient Goddess was dying, and she wondered, what would become of the world? It would probably be worse before it would become better.

"We know too much," she whispered to herself. "We know what we were, and we know someday we will be there again, but we forget this is a new beginning. We would be better off if we could forget it all and begin again. How can we imagine, when out imagination is tainted by memory?"

The moons outside did not answer her.

Yurian came up behind her, strong arms circling her waist, and she allowed herself a moment to settle into his arms. So many saw him as the wild, untamed beastman, even castrated as he was with Forcena's "protection" of the kingdom. But she knew better. He could be gentle, so gentle.

She shut her eyes, and let the feeling wash over her. She was worried about the future, yes, but one still had to find a small place in it.

"Years from now…" she murmured. "Decades, even hundreds…"

------------------------------------

Vadise flew above Rolante in a leisurely manner, but her thoughts were anything but.

It had been for one reason, and one reason only, that she had returned to the country she missed dearly, but had not been to in over a century. Before she had found the new Mana Stones, before the Fairy Wars, before even the War of the Tree. She had last been here to mourn the passing of Hawk and Lise, but now she feared she had returned to mourn the country they left behind.

Altena was done, finished; the greatest kingdom of magic in the world, perhaps even more so the city of Pedan which had given rise to it. Pedan had been a center of magic, and a center of destruction, over and over again; the mages had renamed it to Mindas, but they could not change its power, what it was. Even the city's destruction by Lucemia could not destroy that.

It was not the worst of it, she realized; that, perhaps, was still to come. She could see well enough the signs of decline in Rolante below. Rumors had trickled to her of Jumi being hunted as their powers began to be known, and she sent a silent prayer to Goddess ancient and unborn that Blackpearl had found the place of safety she had wanted. _The more we know, the more we suffer_, she thought to herself. _Yet we have no choice but to know the Goddess._

With a cry, she fled away. She could return to this place, yes, but she would never be able to find Rolante again.

------------------------------------

Nunuzac swiveled at the click of the door behind him. He was perhaps unsurprised to find the Emperor Ricrot, one of the only people who would dare enter his personal laboratory without permission.

"Greetings, my liege," Nunuzac greeted with something that passed for a bow.

"Nunuzac," the Emperor greeted him. At the sound of his name, the professor shifted slightly, uncomfortable still in his new form; bodiless, only his consciousness truly present in the world. "What are you working on?"

"The same as always, my Lord," Nunuzac replied deferentially, to the man who had given him… perhaps not a new life, but a new existence. The events that had necessitated such an existence… those, the fault was solely his own. "Magic. Mana. It's changing, and I am trying to figure out how."

As if Ricrot hadn't known… it was under the Emperor's orders that he was studying this particular artifact. "Mana. Such a powerful, yet ephemeral thing," Ricrot said, stretching an arm towards the sand rose, and Nunuzac shivered as he almost touched its petals. Fragile, like the fragility of Mana itself. A delicate rose, sculpted of gritty sand to become something more, something beautiful, said to be a duplicate of a rose found in the Sanctuary of Mana itself.

He wondered about that fabled sanctuary, the true home of the Goddess – somewhere hidden in the dimensional gap where he himself now existed. Once, he had thought there was no such thing; but from the place he found himself now, it felt a little closer.

_They called Geo a goddessless city_, Nunuzac thought to himself, _when Ricrot pulled the priests of Gato here_. But what was the pursuit of magic, if not of the Goddess? Another voice told him it was only a cheap justification for collecting the Jumi cores that he also studied; but here he had reason, as well.

"What do you hope to do here?" Ricrot asked abruptly, almost as if he had read Nunuzac's thoughts.

Nunuzac was so startled, all he could think of was the truth. "I am here to teach the true ways of magic, not the ways I have abused it," Nunuzac said quietly. _More than that, _he thought; it was a new approach to the Goddess that was needed to keep Her from the clutches of the void. "To make sure we never endure the horrors of another war," he continued. _The wars that I now realize endanger the Goddess herself, weak and vulnerable as she is. _"A new era is coming."

"That is true," Ricrot nodded sagely. "The Empire grows," he said, half to himself, "and we must plan for all possibilities, if that Empire is to survive. We must keep a link to the Goddess as well."

Nunuzac wished he could believe that sentiment was pure, that Anuella's influence had gotten through to the emperor; but he feared that was not the case. _Perhaps, _he wondered, _we would be better off without the Goddess at all. Too many seek only to use her, making her a danger, not a blessing. _And he could not be convinced of which one the Emperor wished.

He got up abruptly to leave, and as he opened the door, Nunuzac saw Anuella there waiting for him. She whispered something to him, and he nodded; he strode off, and before she followed, she turned to Nunuzac, her expression of wariness and sadness, the sign of one who, like he himself, knew far too much.


	54. Legends: Knowledge and its pitfall

**54. Legends: Knowledge and its pitfall**

It was a shift in the comforting pressure of Elazul's body against hers that woke her gently. Ariesa's eyes fluttered open, but none of her other body parts were willing to move. It felt too good right where she was.

He held her just like that for some minutes, slowly becoming obviously antsy. "I'm going to get up," he whispered to her, pushing her hair back softly. She mumbled something noncommittal in response. "Stay here. Sleep some more," he told her. She felt him slip out of her arms, and a soft kiss on her lips, and he was gone.

Sleep still tempted her, and she slipped into a dreamy, half-conscious doze. Perhaps half an hour later, she decided she was ready to get up herself and go look for him. She rose sleepily, and made her way back to the rest of their little group.

Upon entering the camp, there was no sign of either Elazul, or Pearl. Her eyes flickered to where Escad and Daena sat, near mirror images with their heads in hands. How Daena managed to look slightly greenish through her fur, Ariesa had no idea. Escad got up to pace a few steps away, leaving the two women alone.

Daena rose her head glumly as Ariesa approached. "Long night, huh?" Ariesa teased.

Daena managed to crack a smile. "I guess you could say that. I'd be more interested to hear how your night went."

"Whatever do you mean?" asked Ariesa a bit awkwardly. She wasn't sure she was ready to gossip quite yet.

Daena smirked. "I could see it in his face. Elazul strode through here a little bit ago, and something was definitely on his mind. And for once, he didn't look pissed off, so I sort of put things together."

Ariesa barely listened past the first words. "Where did he go?" she asked, and Daena jerked her head behind herself, a little to her left. Ariesa took a few tentative steps in that direction, but it was a sudden glimpse of a duo of figures that stopped her.

He was talking to Pearl.

She felt suddenly guilty, realizing she had not spared even a thought the night before for the other woman who was such a part of Elazul's life. And once she was got her hands on him... he hadn't either. Not that it would have really changed things, but… Despite the intimacy of the night before, she felt completely awkward, not sure what to do next.

"What's wrong?" she hear Daena's voice, but she did not respond. Not for a minute, anyway, until she felt Daena's tap on her shoulder.

"Nothing," Ariesa replied, still distracted and staring off in the distance. "This isn't something I can get between."

------------------------------------

In all the time he had known her, Elazul had never approached his guardian more awkwardly than he had that morning. Nor did she seem like she knew entirely what to make of him.

"I have to talk to you," was all he had told her, and she nodded solemnly, understanding what that meant: _in private_. She rose to walk with him, they drifting only a short distance away, but every one of those steps punctuated for Elazul the enormity of what had happened the night before.

For once, her couldn't tell Pearl everything, and that bothered him, the more so because he couldn't stop thinking about it, about every moment.

_She sunk into his kiss, and he relished the feeling, both arms squeezing her tight in the way he had never allowed before. It was as difficult as he had thought, the sheer volume of feeling and sensation filling his head until he thought he might explode, coursing from core to arm and back again, multiplying, feeding on itself, but worth enduring in its pleasure._

_She dropped, pulling him down with her. There were blankets he had brought, but they lay discarded to the side as they stretched out in the grass that was soft, softer than silk. But not softer than her; it seemed nothing could feel nicer to him than the woman in his arms._

"I want you_," he whispered, idly noting that his voice had never pronounced that sentence before. She said nothing in return, merely pulled him closer, limbs intertwining with his in a way that made him feel almost totally blended with her. But still, it wasn't enough._

_She pushed him gently onto his back. Some part of his mind tried to tell him he had a million other things to worry about, a hundred to attend to, but that part of the world was quickly shunted away. She slid her hand under his shirt, the mail shirt made of iron and silver woven so finely that it felt like fabric itself, and her fingertips crawled up his chest. That, in and of itself, was driving him crazy, and he grabbed her waist with both hands. She shifted slightly to accommodate, and he found himself pulling her own dress over her head, barely noticing the difference except to realize she was incredibly, incomparably beautiful._

_She returned the favor, yanking his shirt off with one hand. The other teased him with her fingertips, tracing the outline of his well-toned muscles, until they skittered up to his core…_

_He let out a cry involuntarily as the full brunt of emotion filled him. His hands on her body, her touch on his core… . She leaned to kiss him, wrapping her body neatly around his, and everything else slipped away._

Pearl didn't need to be told, of course, that they had consummated their relationship. It saved him a potentially embarrassing conversation. "I knew it was going to happen," she told him. "I'm okay with it."

Whatever she said, he could still see it in her eyes. It was hurting her, and she was trying desperately to pretend it wasn't. "Pearl, I am your knight," Elazul said, knowing his confidence was feigned. His head was still swimming; he'd been struggling for so long, it seemed, trying to fight the things he felt, never knowing he could feel _that good_.

Pearl looked away. "Of course, you are… my knight…"

The sentence was left hanging, and he knew why. He was not the only one who was changing. "Pearl," he began gently, for the girl who had been like his sister for so long. "How much of you is left?"

Anyone else, she might have been frightened at the question. But from him, she had little choice but to answer; he was pressuring her, yes; but perhaps it was what she needed. "I..." she stuttered slightly. "I... don't know. Some of this, some of that."

Elazul remained silent, struck by the comment. It wasn't what he wanted to hear; but then again, maybe it was what he expected. Pearl did not speak for a long moment, but her eyes filled with something he had never seen before. He remembered, of course, remembered finding her in the desert, a lost soul with no memory, and he had guarded her since that day, trying to be everything that was missing for her. But now, there was something more for her… and perhaps something more for him, as well.

"I remember…" she began, before trailing off again. "I remember.. who I used to be. But only some of it, there's these gaps. I don't remember everything _she_ did." Elazul noted, oddly, that Pearl referred to her other identity as a separate person, whereas Blackpearl, all toughened, dignified confidence, did not do the same. _She really is a lost princess,_ he thought; _she's just now acknowledging there were things she must accept._

"Elazul... who am I?" she wailed suddenly, and threw her arms around him, all fragility once again.

He fell back into the protective role as naturally as he breathed. _"Elazul… help me!" _she had shrieked at Leires, the first time he had realized he might not be able to do just that. He had been someone different then, someone much more weary, far more serious. He pulled Pearl closer, she barely grazing his chin, and he oddly noticing the scent of her hair, realizing that after it all, she was a woman, and another _person_ besides. He was her knight; it was his responsibility to help her. But this was something for which he could do nothing.

"I don't know," he admitted softly. "I would hope…" _What did he hope? Did he have the luxury of being everything to all persons he cared about? Did he, like Matilda so long ago, like Ariesa, have to make a choice and live with it?_ "I would hope that something can be created out of the future."

Pearl did not respond, but shook slightly in tearless sobs. Randomly, he recalled being in the Jumi city, where all the Jumi seemed to slowly but surely be recovering their tears, and she showing not the slightest more inclination than before. Perhaps she had seen too much; perhaps, in the end, she was the only one who truly could not cry.

"Everything changes, doesn't it, Elazul," Pearl sighed at last. "And you, too. You will always be my knight, but sometimes, you won't be... and in those times, you could be something more than you can imagine."

_Imagination_. There was that word. Now, though, he understood. It meant the same thing for which the Jumi used the term _sparkle_, and others used a hundred other words besides. They were all code for different understandings of what Mana _was_, but they all meant the same in the end.

_Who was Pearl_, he asked himself, repeating her question silently to himself. Blackpearl, yes, he understood. But this other person, Pearl… she was the one who was the mystery. He knew her more than anyone; at the same time, he knew nothing… He did not know. He did not know a great many things he wished he did.

------------------------------------

Lisa poked Escad roughly. "Hey there, sleepyhead."

At least, he figured out who it was after a moment of groggy confusion. Escad groaned, realizing he had fallen asleep after just a moment in the grass. At least his head felt slightly better. Slightly.

"Why are you bothering me?" he demanded.

"Because I wished to speak to you," came Sierra's voice, and Escad awkwardly pulled himself to a sitting position.

The dragoon knelt in the grass next to him. "You said some things last night," she told him. "About imagination. I want to know more about what you know of it."

That snapped Escad right to attention. "I don't really know what I said," he mumbled, staring at the grass. "I was pretty drunk."

Sierra looked at him with an expression that made it clear she knew he was lying; but thankfully, she let it go. "So, what now?" Escad demanded of her, taking the barest notice of the rest of the party. Bud, Thoma, Daena crept towards the group… but Ariesa and the Jumi still missing. He pushed aside a distracting bit of jealousy. He had better things to worry about anyway.

"The Tree," Sierra began. "It still must be awakened. And there may be others… who desire it. It worries me that it has all been too easy."

"We'll figure it out," Escad said grumpily.

"You think it will be so simple to greet the Goddess?" Sierra questioned.

"Well, climb the tree and that's it, right?" Escad replied blandly.

"Why do you fight Mana so?" she asked him, and he blinked. "I don't - " he began, but she talked right over him. "Don't deny it. You avoid the fairies; you don't particularly care for Jumi. You must know _something_ to even _have_ these prejudices, knowledge that we might need before it is all through."

Escad shuddered. He knew altogether too much. He knew the dark sides of hope, of love, of knowledge, of trust. "I wish I didn't know," he told her.

She harrumphed. "Perhaps you have some Forsenan roots? I am from there myself, you know. The country's prejudice against Mana is an old one."

"I'm from _Gato_," Escad insisted. "My whole family, as far back as we can remember."

"Oh?" Sierra cocked her head, almost a touch seductively. "All the more reason you should understand Mana. So, I ask you again, have you acknowledged your connection to Mana yet?"

It was obviously pointless to lie to this woman. "A little bit," he admitted.

"It's a start," Sierra conceded, "but I would diplomatically suggest you hurry it the hell up."

------------------------------------

Elazul spent some minutes alone once Pearl had left, contemplating, remembering. _Thinking_. Or hoping to, because he came to no conclusions.

The truth weighed on him. He was in love.

And he didn't have the slightest idea what to do about it.

_Did it matter at this point?_ he asked himself. They were in a place where no one had been in a thousand years, seeing something no one had ever seen, and he was just a sliver of a stone – literally – compared to that. He wished he had the luxury of worrying about the frivolous, but reality reared its ugly head.

He stopped staring into the sun, and turned back.

Elazul broke through the trees to find his entire party busily clustered around a fire. The twins appeared to be making breakfast, chattering in that way only twins have of understanding each other, while Thoma seemed to be doing his part organizing dishes and such. With the morning's activities under control, the remaining members of the party scattered themselves over the logs and stones that made do as chairs, Daena predictably chatting with Ariesa. Sierra and Escad sat slightly farther apart but seemingly still comfortable around each other, he nursing a cup of some tomato-based liquid.

And Pearl sitting opposite Ariesa, totally alone.

Elazul drew breath sharply, involuntarily. He had the uncomfortable feeling that Pearl had chosen her seat for a particular reason, and he was now facing the test.

Part of him was ready to turn right back around and lose himself in the forest until he could figure it all out, but Lisa caught sight of him first. "Hi, Elazul!" she announced brightly, with the pure exuberance of youth, completely unaware of the subtexts she was missing.

Eyes turned to him, he ignoring the ones he wasn't ready to see. He turned, and with a few quick strides, moved to sit… next to Ariesa.

A rapid quiet that made him squirm settled over the clearing. He turned to look at the person he had come to, and though her expression was neutral, the warmth in her eyes said it all.

He tensed, wondering if anyone was going to make a comment that would make him squirm. Sierra, fortunately, saved him. "Escad and I were talking about a few things this morning," she announced, taking control of the conversation. Escad turned away, and Elazul wondered how well that discussion had gone.

"We were just discussing… well… it feels different here, like something's broken," Daena added. She shuddered slightly. "Like barriers are breaking. I don't know if that is good or bad." Thoma nodded in agreement, looking back the way they had come.

"We're near the tree," Elazul reasoned. "I mean, from what I understand, we're sort of in the Goddess's own dimension as well as our own? Something must have happened to bridge the gap."

"I thought much the same," Sierra replied, "but it makes the next series of events… unpredictable, to say the least. Is it just the barriers to get here? Or are other things breaking down as well?"

Ariesa kept quiet, but snuggled against his right side. He reached his arm around her, pulling her closer, thinking to himself how natural that felt. And how nice.

He finally turned to Pearl. She seemed to have regained that slightly blank look that he now knew hid so much… but there was a small smile on her face.

------------------------------------

Their eyes were playing tricks on them. The sun was well past its peak by the time they could accurately judge the distance to the Tree, realizing over that time that it was, in fact, much larger than they had first anticipated. They exited the density of the forest to find a large area of clear land, only sparsely populated by the occasional bush, making the Tree appear ever more immense. There was an odd sort of hazy light around it, making it seem to fade in and out of view, dizzying to look directly at.

"The longest day of the year is today," Daena noted randomly. "At least we'll have enough light to get there."

"What day of the week is it?" Ariesa wondered idly. "I've lost count."

"Luna's day, I think," piped up Lisa.

"No," Pearl said dreamily. "It's the Mana Holy Day."

"That's not a day of the week," protested Bud.

"It was, once," Pearl told him. "And it will be again. This is the first."

The words struck Daena, hitting a nerve. _The Holy Day_. The Day of the Goddess, when all was balanced once again. She only hoped the turmoil she had inside herself could be balanced as well; she knew destiny was taking a different path for her, and she wasn't sure she was ready.

_But then again, _ she wondered silently, _does anything ever happen when we are truly ready for it? _She sneaked glances at her nearest and dearest, finally settling on Ariesa and Elazul. _Well, they've been stumbling through it all as well, and they seem to be figuring it out._

_Does the Goddess go through the same things we do? _she suddenly wondered. Her gaze returned to the Tree. As if her eyes could possibly miss it. The tree loomed in the forefront of everyone's vision, and it seemed to dominate conversation above all other topics. Or suppress conversation, more accurately.

If it wasn't for the occasional chatter from the twins, the group would have been on a silent march indeed. Bud and Lisa were the life of the group, really, currently resorting to punching each other playfully to keep their young selves occupied. Daena felt a pang of guilt, wondering why they were here at all.

"They're as much a part of the world as the rest of us," Escad told her when she voiced her sentiments. "They deserve their chance to fight for it as well."

"I suppose so," Daena replied doubtfully; but deep down, she knew he was right. If anyone understood the need to fight, it was Escad.

Ariesa and Elazul led, Daena wondering if they realized in fact how much their body language gave away. Ariesa hadn't told her a word… and she didn't need to. They walked ever so closer together, heads tilted slightly more towards each other…

It reminded Daena of Matilda and Escad, way back when.

Pearl walked languorously by herself, and though she seemed comfortable by herself, it still bothered Daena. She suddenly broke into a sprint towards the Jumi girl, and after a moment, she heard Escad's footsteps rushing to catch up. Pearl turned at their approach, her expression the dreamy one that Daena had always seen on her.

Truthfully, Daena didn't exactly get Pearl; she knew that Pearl was Elazul's guardian, and Elazul was close to Ariesa, and Ariesa was her friend… But since she and Escad had returned from Gato, there had been something different about the girl. It wasn't clear to her until she got close, but there was… a power… to the little Jumi.

"You okay, Pearl?" she asked, in a voice that sounded fake even to herself.

Pearl turned to regard her with those gray-blue eyes. "I'm okay… just thinking about things, I guess," she replied, offering no further information.

"Any answers?" Daena inquired hopefully.

Pearl looked straight ahead, towards the Tree, with a strange craving in her eyes. "Not yet," she replied.

------------------------------------

"Tell me of the empire," Sierra urged Thoma.

Thoma squirmed uncomfortably. He had only given the briefest of descriptions to Ariesa, and she had seemed satisfied to hear that. "What do you want to know?"

"Whatever you wish to tell me. Knowledge is power," Sierra asserted.

_Mana_ was power, Thoma thought to himself. Lisa and Bud had told him that. "Knowledge is a trap," he finally said, surprised at the bitterness in his voice. "I wish I could forget the Empire and everything in it."

"Oh?" Sierra gazed at him in a way that made him feel she was seeing more than she let on. "You would forget all, deny that part of yourself, just to save yourself the discomfort of unpleasant memories?" Thoma wanted to nod, but couldn't. "Perhaps you do not know this, but I am from the Empire myself."

"When? I thought you were a really old dragoon," Thoma asked, wondering suddenly if that was a rude thing to ask.

Sierra smiled slightly. "No one gets born a dragoon, Thoma. Or a knight, for that matter. I have to be from somewhere, right?" He nodded. "It was a long time ago, when what is now called the Wars of Death were only an inkling in the twisted brain of the ruler who came to be called Deathbringer. That was what led me to Vadise; I figure the dragons were the only ones who could stop the Empire. As it turned out, I was only partly right."

Thoma knew those stories, though he suspected the Empire versions were somewhat biased. _The dragons attacked, _he had been taught,_ and though they stole away His Majesty's corporeal form, the power of his soul let him live on, to rule our glorious Empire once again. _Lessons drilled into him since birth; lessons that had betrayed him. "I hope," he finally admitted, "that the Goddess can put a stop to what the Jumi and the dragons could not."

Sierra looked at him with a piercing glare, one that felt like it read into his soul. "I suppose we are all a little wiser," Sierra said, "some of us uncomfortably so."

The Tree grew larger and larger in his vision; now that the cues of the horizon were lost, it was obvious it was a huge, overwhelming structure that could swallow most towns whole in its canopy of branches. It was an enormous, magnificent thing, its simple _presence_ speaking of all eternity, now perhaps only a mile or so away. Thoma stopped involuntarily, realizing out of the corner of his eye that his companions had done the same, sheer reverence for the Goddess overtaking them all.

For a long moment, they stood there together, all captivated by the sight before them. Quiet spread around, but behind that… there was a sort of low rumble in the distance.

_Some odd creature, _Thoma wondered at first, even though he knew it was not so. The grinding sound grew louder, and it itched into Thoma's brain, a nagging feeling of recognition, until suddenly he realized with a start what it was, and wheeled around in fright.

"The Empire!" he cried. "The Empire is coming!"

----------------------------

Thoma's shout shocked them all into sharp attention, and they turned to see it was true.

Elazul looked at Pearl to see his own fear reflected in her eyes a hundredfold. These were the people who had stolen their city from them. They were Jumi, and that was their pain to bear, whether they had been there or not. It was the pain of all the Jumi.

The instincts years of knighthood had bred into Elazul's bones took over, pushing out the plain panic that threatened to surface. _A wide open space_, _no cover_, he assessed unemotionally; they could not hope to outrun the machines of the empire. The panic was getting harder and harder to keep at bay as he realized there was nowhere to go, no hope to escape… and no future if they did not succeed. He felt Ariesa by his side, felt her muscles tense as despair filled him, his own emotions seemingly mirrored in her.

He threw his right arm instinctively around Ariesa, and his left around Pearl. Daena and Escad flanked their sides, Sierra cautiously inching in front of Ariesa, the twins huddled behind and Thoma cautiously circling towards the front. The forces of the Empire poured out of the trees by the hundreds, the thousands, and they shrunk back towards each other to form a tight circle, all knowing they didn't stand a chance.

It wasn't only soldiers. It was beasts straight out of legends, all kinds, from four-legged lumbering things to semi-human. And within them all, grotesque, misshapen creatures out of nothing but nightmares.

"What are those?" gasped Daena.

"Demons. Connected to Mana in a reverse way, the opposite of the opposition of elements that balance to contain our world. This many together…" Sierra's voice was grim. "Only the Goddess can save us now."

Pearl only lifted her head. "Not yet," she said. "The moon is coming. Things will return to what they once were." Elazul only stared at her, wondering if she had actually lost it… until suddenly, they found themselves covered in shadow, as a dark shape blotted out the sun.

It was a _dragon_. A dragon he had not met before. He was a wrinkled, wiry thing, dull purple skin stretched thin over spindly bones, but with an aura of ancient age surrounding him. He dove forward, swooping over the small group of allies, his body revealed to be nothing short of enormous, and the troops of the Empire paused, shrinking back in surprise.

Blurs of light suddenly obscured Elazul's eyes, but it was his core that told him what they were. _Fairies_. Hundreds of them, flickering and circling the group. "We will protect you," they cried almost as one, "for whatever good it may do."

"Fairies!" gasped Lisa. "How did you get here?"

"We were pulled here by the Sword… the Tree.. their harmony together…" Their voices chimed, ringing over each other to make the words echo over and over again. Their light surrounded them, light of neither sun nor moon, but a luminescent mix of all the colors, all the elements. The light of Mana itself.

A gust of wind was felt from the east, and Sierra, the first to look, gasped in surprise. "Vadise!" she cried, as Elazul turned almost as one with the dragoon to see the white dragon hovering by them.

The dragon took a deep breath. "The God-Beasts are confined once again, the Stones caging and shaping them. I hope the Stones are ready. Dragons are no elemental spirits, but we will have to do." He had always thought her a gentle soul, but she was visibly consumed by fury now, her one blue eye burning in anger. "Sierra," she said, her voice now cold, "it is not your turn to fight." Sierra opened her mouth as if to argue, but Vadise quickly cut her off, putting the inflection of the ages into her voice. "You have your responsibilities, and I have mine," her voice whipped.

Sierra only nodded, and she barking commands like a soldier, they huddled together more tightly than before. The surprised Empire troops were reorganizing once again, and the mysterious dragon turned to regard Vadise, narrowed eyes peering towards her as if awaiting her pleasure.

"It is time, Bahamut," Vadise nodded. "This place, this day."

The dragon called Bahamut nodded his wormlike neck, and batlike wings snapped to their full span, Mana itself seeming to be what carried him aloft.

He opened his mouth, and out spewed flames like Elazul had never seen before. _No, not flames_, his core seemed to whisper to him; darkness, chaos, emptiness all roiled across the flares, a roiling, seething mass that blazed over the forces of the Empire.

Humans screamed; demons roared, some caught in that mad spiral of destruction to be obliterated, some instantaneously, others burning like paper as their otherworldly shrieks echoed over the land. The ones who escaped Bahamut's wrath were madder than ever, but he quickly retorted until all the otherworldly creatures were decimated, leaving only terrified human soldiers in their wake.

"I can make a barrier, with the fairies' help," Vadise told them. "Something like the barrier to the Holyland that you crossed. It might not last long, but it will be enough. You had best gather together," Vadise warned, and the group huddled closer, the fairies pulling tighter.

It was… a barrier, but not, Elazul realized. It was something perhaps… insulating… them from Mana, if only for a moment; he could not sense his own core, finding the sensation quite disturbing. The generals pushed the troops forward, and Vadise's voice rang over the clearing. "Now, Cybele!"

A golden-scaled dragon lurched out of nowhere, as if she had been hiding in the rocks themselves, and reared with a cry. Her front legs fell to earth, and Elazul was glad to be close to the ground as it began to quake before them, first shaking and rattling slightly, then rising into violent tremors. Elazul lifted his head over the roar of the earth, the body of the Goddess, to see cracks appear, forming into canyons, the surface grossly rearranging into a fissured landscape of devastation, effectively stopping the forces who had not tumbled to their deaths already in the cracks below.

The shield abruptly winked out of existence, only to be replaced by something different, something far more physical. In the distance, they saw troops pounding on an invisible barrier, and Elazul looked up at Vadise to see her smiling absolutely… smugly. "Wind," she told him. "A force pushing them back as soon as they approach. A rather underestimated element, frankly."

They were safe for the moment, but panicked, confused, and even Elazul caught himself looking around, floundering. "What do we do now?" worried Lisa.

"_GO_!" came a voice, and Elazul swiveled instinctively, looking for the source, his eyes widening in absolute shock when he placed it. Striding out of absolutely nowhere, as far as he could tell, was Larc.

Sierra dropped her jaw. "Larc, how…" she trailed off in wonder and sadness.

"No time!" he growled. "They will not be held back for long!" He gesture sharply with his axe towards the tree, and barreled forward to lead them to it.

Elazul knew when there was no hope. Checking first for Ariesa, then for Pearl , he ran. He allowed himself a glance backwards, and could almost _see_ a barrier made of the air itself, seeming to strain towards them. A couple broke through somehow, but Larc quickly butchered them, wielding his sharp axe in vicious circling arcs, making even Elazul wince at the carnage.

Half a mile perhaps to go. The machines of war controlled by the empire caught up, easily resisting whatever obstruction had held the soldiers back.

He might have worried for the twins, but oddly, the elven heritage came to their rescue, the two flitting far ahead of the rest. Daena, of course, had no problem tearing ahead of the group, and he suddenly found himself feeling slightly inadequate with only Escad and Larc trailing behind him.

He turned to give the Holy Knight a chance to catch up, but as soon as he did, Larc roared once again. "_Go_! The Goddess is calling!"

Elazul looked forward once again. A quarter mile, he thought…

------------------------------------

Pearl felt her body running, but it was a distant thing from her, racing ahead far slower than was her mind. With every stride, every second, her memories made leaps and bounds.

All the decisions she had made… no, not her, but her nevertheless. For centuries, she had made decisions out of guilt, out of fear, out of need, out of desperation, out of the simple desire to preserve that which she had begun. Every choice a cost, every decision a heartbreak, every step losing a little bit of herself.

Memories, feelings, even names crept up once again. _Angela…_ she was in a snowfield, watching centuries of a kingdom fading away. _Lise…_ Something about dragons, cliffs, past revisiting a place that still had hope. Another thread ran through, the place where she had grown up, a mother, a priestess of the Goddess herself, but no name would surface and only the vaguest outline of a face. Yet she knew it had been her mother who had started her on the very beginnings of the path she was on now, who had given her the simple motivations that had led to the complexities of the events she had experienced.

And it all brought her to this place, this day.

The Tree drew her… like Mekiv, like Leires… the Tree seemed to _want_ her. It drove her forward, with all the wishes she had ever had, and she forgot everything else in favor of that one goal.

She vaguely noticed Sierra leaping onto the enormous roots with superhuman agility, reaching down with both hands to tug Bud and Lisa upwards. Daena needed nearly as little as help, and Ariesa was right behind her. The men grabbed onto the roots themselves, pulling themselves up, and suddenly she found herself behind them all. Elazul turned, familiar concern on his face, but barely did he have a chance to note her presence before strong, furred arms heaved her up with tremendous force. Elazul and Sierra both reached for her, helping her up as she tumbled, breath knocked out of her.

Larc pulled himself up with strong tension of muscles, and Pearl found her stomach turning in knots. The Goddess's voice, incomprehensible yet understandable in another way altogether, seemed to scream in her head with panic as Larc finally lurched onto the gnarled, enormous roots, some height above the valley.

They huddled together, instinctively, watching as Vadise's barrier exploded and the forces charged towards the tree. There was no left place to go, just they and the Goddess facing that onslaught.

"Tiamat!" Larc called to the empty air.

A small, lithe blue dragon swept down, and Pearl wondered if she had been hiding in the branches of the tree itself. The troops paused in surprise and fear at the new threat before them. The dragon Tiamat flitted before them, defiant. "You wish to challenge me?" she shouted, to be greeted by an incomprehensible cacophony of shouts and insults. It didn't faze her in the least. "I am fire. I am water. I am chaos. I am everything that is dangerous to the Goddess… but I defend her now. I am the _Leviathan_."

"Watch," murmured Elazul, and Pearl looked at her knight, startled. She felt… something... through the bond, something ancient, and it began to trigger a memory of her own…

A roar came then, a roar that drowned out the army itself, and the earth shook. Sierra grabbed the trunk, and Larc leaned over her protectively, while Ariesa fell to her knees. Those who were not sitting barely had time to crouch and brace, as the earth shook in anger.

"What is it?" cried Daena, her arms around Bud, and Escad clinging to Lisa.

She looked at her knight. He knew, she could see it, and that ancient part of her knew as well, but Sierra was the one who spoke. "Mana," she spoke, her eyes shining. "It is being used once again."

With a deafening roar, the ocean spilled over the hills beyond, swelling above its boundaries, tsunamis on both sides racing to meet each other, the sheer power of the ocean swallowing the forces of the Empire before their very eyes.

The two sides met with a violent crash, the impact splashing water hundreds of feet in the air. The backtide lashed against the roots of the tree, and even as all shrunk away, expecting to get swept in, it stopped, mere inches from their feet, and slowly ebbed back into a sea of sudden calm.

Vadise hovered over them, watching the annihilation with sadness in her one eye. "Yes, Sierra, it is Mana. With the return of the Sword… everything is in place. All that remains is the Goddess's final blessing."

------------------------------------

Where there had been land, now there was ocean once again. People could be seen out there, like pieces of driftwood or seaweed, struggling to make it to dry land; some might make it, but many others would not.

Ariesa suddenly felt very ill, clutching the handle of the Sword of Mana, feeling it squeeze against the scar of her palm. She _knew_, she understood, that sometimes wrong was found on the way to right, but she could not bring herself to like it. Not when it harmed like… _this_.

"And blood will be shed over a revived Mana Tree," murmured Elazul beside her.

"Wow, that was cool," Bud said, awestruck. Next to him, Escad only stared, frowning darkly.

"There might be some of my friends out there," Thoma said, a bit strangled. Lisa reached out a hand to him, shooting her brother a dirty look.

Sierra only looked at Larc in wonder, the brother and sister meeting once again where nothing had been expected.

"Larc…" Sierra began.

"Hush," Larc chided her. "No words are needed." The brother and sister only looked at each other, eons of history, of memories, floating between them.

"_Why_?" asked Ariesa, half-furious, half emotionless. "Why…_this_?"

"It was an island, once. The island of oblivion."All eyes turned to Pearl. "It's the Goddess. She must bring everything back to what it was once before." Before them, that odd hazy light obscured the tree beyond.

"Then let's go make her answer for this," Ariesa replied stubbornly, but as she swiveled and strode forward, she bumped quite firmly against something invisible, but harder than any rock. She rubbed her elbow, looking reproachfully at whatever it was that had stopped her.

"We're stuck," Daena groaned, and Ariesa nodded in agreement. The Tree stood before them, so close, but so far away. Ariesa could have banged her head in frustration against… whatever it was, sealing away the power of Mana…

And they were trapped, between that barrier and the sea.

The fairies flitted over what was now a long expanse of open water, as far as the eye could see. They congregated around Pearl, who squeezed herself against the barrier with a sigh, then let out a squeal. "Anise," she cried. "She devoted her life to getting through this wall, and it never let her in. Will it let us?"

"Anise did not have the Sword," said one of the fairies.

"Can you help us?" Sierra asked.

"We cannot go any further," one of the fairies replied sadly. "We have not connected to the new Goddess."

"What good are you, then?" Escad demanded.

"No better than you, I suppose," one answered. "We only want to survive the Goddess's awakening to become real once again. You will have to find… some other connection to the Goddess."

"Perhaps there's one now," noted another fairy, gesturing to the Tree behind them.

Ariesa could have groaned. As if her day couldn't get any worse… a group of _Sproutlings_ appeared, squeaking as they traversed down the tree trunk. "Yep, they're right!"one chirped. "All we plants are connected at our roots!"

Another looked around furtively. "Is a big monster coming to suck out the tree's energy?"

"Then we must help it!" others squealed behind it. "It's our job to focus the light of love on the Mana Tree's wounds!"

"How is this helping?" muttered Elazul.

"Because they speak truth, if you only know how to listen. That knowledge is what is called wisdom," came a voice, and among the creatures, Pokiehl strutted calmly down the tree trunk as if he had been there all along.

"Welcome," the Wisdom greeted them. "Welcome to the tree, the Goddess. Welcome to the legend that is Mana. Allow me to introduce myself," he said with a flourish. "Pokiehl, Messenger of the Cosmic Truth, the Wisdom of Tree at your service. Keepin' an eye on the Goddess herself."

Ariesa was puzzled. "So… these sproutlings… they are your helpers?"

Pokiehl laughed despite himself. "No, ma'am," he replied.

"They have no thoughts, and nothing to say," griped Daena.

"True," Pokiehl conceded. "They have no thoughts, they _are_ thoughts. They are the thoughts of the Goddess herself. They multiplied during the Wars of Death, as the Goddess worried more and more of the world… but they have been here as long as She has. I merely keep tabs on them, if you will, and I sing of their knowledge." He strummed his lute for emphasis. "Does it surprise you that the Goddess thinks in plants?" His gaze swept suggestively up to the heavens, blocked by the enormous canopy of the Mana tree. "Does it bother you to know these things? They are the closest to know of the Goddess's pain, the Goddess's plan. They say the Tree is in an immovable, absolute state, but it is not so; that is only the way She wishes She could be. The Tree has wisdom, and wants, as much as the rest of us, and she suffers no less for it."

_Thoughts of the Goddess_… it made Ariesa's head spin. "Then, could they tell us how to get through the barrier?"

"Why… you already know. Just _enter_ it," Pokiehl instructed.

"Me?" Ariesa said.

"It is a doorway to beyond. If you are willing to go beyond, to go to the truth, why, all you have to do is open the door."

Ariesa pressed herself against the barrier, contemplating. _Open the door. Go beyond._ Hadn't that been what she had been doing, all along? But, it seemed, with every step she took, ever more was asked of her. Was she indeed, willing?

From beyond, there seemed to be an answer, but an answer she was perhaps not ready to hear.

She shuddered slightly. "I… I can't," she admitted, reluctantly. _Some heroine she was_. Her friends fell all over each other, offering their tidbits of encouragement, but it could not help what Ariesa knew. She wasn't enough; she had thought she was, but it seemed it was not so.

Elazul was the only one who did not speak. He merely leaned in, close, and Ariesa caught her breath at the memory of exactly _how_ close they had been only the night before. He reached around her with his own right hand, grasping her fist in his, and led her arm across her body, his fingers closing hers around the pommel of the sword.

She let him guide her hand to pull the Mana Sword out of the sheath and into the air before her, but then Elazul's hand paused, and she knew it was her turn.

"Let go," she whispered, so quietly that no one else could here. She felt Elazul's head nod by her ear, his breath warming her face, and his hand slipping away from hers.

Ariesa took a deep breath. Elazul had set her path, but the move was her own. She lowered the sword, and the point contacted that glittering barrier, not to cut, but almost as if to caress.

The response was immense. The flickering barrier behind which the tree had seemed to waver snapped into a blaze of color and light, rising to an intensity so great Ariesa dropped her eyes away from it, before it began to fade and disappear, leaving the Tree now visible in all its color and glory, now exhibiting a vibrancy that seemed almost too much to comprehend. Ariesa merely stood in shock at the enormity of what had opened before her, the Tree of legend, of the Goddess she did not believe in, now towering over her with an immensity that she could not have imagined, nor had she understood while it was hidden behind that glittering barrier.

Part of her wanted to stumble, to fall to her knees, but she stilled herself, and put one foot in front of the other, muffled steps indicating the rest of her party following. Together, they shuffled, reverently, only a few steps forward but feeling as if it was a world away. _THIS_ was the Tree, the manifestation of the Goddess herself.

Pokiehl nodded towards them. "You are about to uncover the true nature of the goddess. Are you ready to _know_ her?"

Ariesa took a deep breath, gripping Elazul's hand as she spoke. "I am," she replied.

"That one word is your power. If you know you can handle that power, then proceed. Be welcome to the Tree, the route to the Sanctuary of Mana, the home of the Goddess. Trust in her, awaken her."

Pokiehl swept a gaze over the party, pausing when he came to Elazul. "And you."

"What?" Elazul asked.

"The tree is here, the moon is lost."

"What does that have to do with me?" Elazul demanded.

"It has everything to do with you, because you have guarded the moon. The tree cannot live without the moon as much as the sun." Elazul started slightly, but Pokiehl paid him no mind. "And you, little one," Pokiehl said, addressing Pearl.

"Yes?" Pearl inquired, with surprising cheerfulness.

"It is time for you to accept yourself, to reemerge. Do you understand?"

"I do." Pearl smiled, and a light began to exude around her. Ariesa knew already what was coming, but many of the others did not, and mouths dropped, startled.

Lady Blackpearl rose her head, scanning her eyes over the group. "I am ready," she said, quietly, but her voice now carrying all the woman's regal presence.

"Very well, then," Pokiehl concluded. "The worst is yet to come."


	55. Secrets: Desire to awaken

**55. Secrets: Desire to awaken**

The jungle had many illusions, but this was not one of them. Valda found her breaths growing ever heavier, and could not pretend that meant anything other than what it did.

Lit sconces surrounded her, in the center of the Temple of Pedan. _A center of Mana._ A place had seemed more real to her than anything else, in this world without the Goddess. The site of so many begotten memories; and now, it triggered so many more.

Richard was gone, _had_ been gone for some years. Her love, forever, and she was nothing but grateful for the time she had with him. And the children she had from him. Angela knelt at her side, Loki standing beside his sister. Fairia, her first granddaughter, stood a few steps away, sniffling slightly, no better at hiding emotion than her mother had been.

"I want to talk to Angela," she said, despite it all her voice retaining the dignity she prided herself on. Fairia grew a bit wide-eyed, but moved slightly towards the door; Loki only nodded calmly, and departed.

They were no less valuable to her; but to them, she had already said their goodbyes. To her daughter… she had something more to say.

She motioned for Angela to lean in close, and considered how much the younger woman had changed - from the fiery, impulsive daughter to the passionate and brave queen she had become. Despite everything that happened, Angela was still one of Valda's greatest victories.

"Listen closely, for I have little time," she urged, every word an effort. "The burden of Altena now rests on your shoulders. Perhaps it is winter for our country… but its spirit will live on the same way it always has, by understanding the balance of dark and light… much like you and I have always balanced. " Angela only nodded soberly, but tears glinted in her eyes. "But you are left to finish what I no longer can… for none of us is immortal, except through our children. You, not I, have always been the one to take us into tomorrow, into a future that I have pondered… a future I can influence no longer," she finished.

Angela, for once in her life, said nothing - only taking her mother's hand. "Be strong, Angela," Valda told her, raising her other hand weakly to her daughter's face. "The world exists so we can live. Death is no more than the balance of that."

Angela's lip quivered, and for a brief moment, Valda flashed back to a memory of that same twitch on a little girl. "Mother," she began tremulously, "what happens to your soul after you die? Is it gone? Or does it live forever?"

"Maybe it stops off in the Underworld for a break first," Valda suggested wryly, finding a sudden, mad sense of humor in the whole scenario.

Angela scoffed. "Why would it do such a thing as that?"

"It doesn't matter," Valda said. "What matters, is the desire to awaken, to move on from there. I think…" she paused for another labored breath. "I think to awaken somewhere where Mana lets us be free once again." Her eyes were having trouble focusing. "The new era… where people will become free."

"The fairy," Angela burst out. "When she wakes… so will we all."

Valda wanted to nod, but she could produce only the slightest movement. It did not matter; Angela _knew_, gripping her mother's hand in silent agreement, and leaving one last look into her mother's eyes. Valda felt her lids closing, and as she reluctantly let her daughter go, she reached for the Mana she had missed for so long. The Priestess of Mana reached for the Goddess.

And She was waiting.

------------------------------------

Alluma lay on her back in the cooling grass, staring at the night sky above the lake shore outside Wendel. Five of the six moons were out, making for a brilliant display. She found the light of those moons comforting. Her own name was said to mean "light"; perhaps it was part of who she was.

It was the midst of summer, and the nighttime was quite pleasant. It made her long for the summers of Rolante, the warm air broken by languorous mountain breezes, never too hot, never too cold. But as much as she loved her homeland, there were reasons she had left as well.

Besides, she reminded herself, Rolante would always be there for her to return to.

Her father used to bring her out to places like this; her mother would join them sometimes, but she was often held back by the demands of royalty. _Ugh_. She knew she would never have to deal with that; she was the third daughter, and even if Jelissa never had children, that still made it highly unlikely she or her descendants would ever have to rule. It was for Aliota to worry about the fate of what was to come for Rolante.

Her father Hawk had bequeathed to her his wanderlust, and now she traveled much as he had - perhaps with the occasional lover but mostly alone, all alone. As much as she loved Rolante, she preferred it this way; crossing the world with no one to answer to.

She leaned against her lover's chest, sighing in contentment as she played with a gift from her mother, a peculiar golden seed that filled both her hands.

"What are you going to do with that?" he asked.

She turned to kiss him before answering. "I'm going to grow a tree," she said. "No, a house. A treehouse. The sort of home the Goddess would love." She giggled at the thought.

"You can't grow a house," he objected.

"Then I'll build a house against the tree, and live there," she said, then paused. "But it might take a while to grow it. If it doesn't grow for me quickly enough… maybe someone else would enjoy it."

He looked over the glassy lake, tugging at one of the sticks she used to hold her hair in place. She shivered slightly at his touch. "What do you think about them renaming Lake Astoria?"

"Perhaps they wanted to forget the tragedy of Astoria's destruction, thinking they can obliterate the memories by calling it Lake Kilma instead," she replied soberly. A darker mood drifted over her. "I wonder… is it right to lose knowledge? Or is our knowledge creating the fear that keeps us from awakening into the future?"

He did not reply, but she found comfort for her worries as he held her close. She let her thoughts drift back to the light above once again, gently letting go of those memories of the past, at least for the sake of this moment.

She knew things were changing. She did not fear. The future was an adventure waiting to be imagined.

------------------------------------

Asura gripped her spear as if it could save everything she held dear.

She was out by herself today, among the cliffs and winds of Rolante. _This might soon be all that Rolante is_, she thought to herself.

The War of the Tree had definitely taken its toll; but it had been the decades of the Fairie Wars that had really done her country in. Forcena had pragmatically switched sides to support the mages; but Rolante remained pure. They were Amazons, warriors of the Goddess herself; they knew connection to the Goddess was the only hope. She only hoped Gato could carry the torch that Wendel once had.

So much had changed since the time of her grandmother Alara. Hope, dreams, desire… And more mundane concerns. The population had declined, their resources and wealth were strained, and she, the queen, was childless, leaving the kingdom without an heir. She was old enough that she suspected it would remain that way.

Should they have done things differently, made different choices? Should she, the queen, have led them a safer way? _Was it only foolish pride_, she wondered, that kept her clinging to that ideal for her country? Was that all there was to it?

Desperation led one to vain hope, and that was what drove her now. She had come up here to see if she could find any trace of the elemental spirits, wishing she could coax them out of wherever they were hiding, not knowing even what she expected from them. _Power? Advice? Comfort? _Maybe the simple knowledge they were still _there_, waiting, would be enough to convince her the things she and her ancestors had done were right.

But… no luck. Wherever the spirits were, they would not come to her.

She was left standing on the cliffs, frustrated and disillusioned, when above her, a plaintive wail caught her attention. Her head snapped up to see an enormous white dragon filling the sky.

Asura knew well enough who that dragon was, and sent out a silent thought. _Remember us, Flammie, _she said inside her mind. _Remember Rolante. Remember the knights of the Goddess._

------------------------------------

A formal summons to Ricrot, Emperor of the Forsenan Empire, was either cause for celebration, or concern.

At least, that was the thought dominating the brain of Julio Liotte, as he walked up the stairs to the imposing throne room.

He was ushered in quietly, unceremoniously. Obviously, he was expected; but at the same time, he got the feeling that whatever was to transpire, was not something that the Emperor wished known to all. His unease was only reinforced when the doors closed ominously behind him, leaving only he and his liege, alone.

Ricrot only stood there, brooding, seeming now more than ever the old man he was becoming. It seemed he had always been that way since the wars - since Anuella left. _Why_ she did, he had not the slightest idea, but it was not for his sort to raise such concerns. He had his responsibilities.

As Julio approached, Ricrot turned, a faint smile even crossing the ruler's face. "Julio," he greeted him with sudden warmth.

"My lord," Julio replied cautiously.

"You may be at ease," Ricrot announced, and Julio let go of some, but not all, of his tension as the Emperor began to speak. "I have called you here today because you are the son of my closest friend and greatest warrior. The 'guardian of the empire', I have called Lasdanac, and now, I hope for you to follow him."

"Yes, my lord," Julio said, bowing to one knee, hoping his wariness did not show.

"Rise," Ricrot scolded. "I have known you since you were little more than a boy, when you and your father first came to Geo. Why so much awkwardness now?"

"It is not the same to address a king as a friend, my lord," he replied carefully, "and even less so to address an emperor."

"Point taken," Ricrot replied. He turned to look out the window. "But I sense there is something more. I would know what you are thinking."

Julio thought of many things, trying to figure out what sort of answer the Emperor expected of him. He thought of how things might have been different if Ricrot had stayed with Anuella; if they had produces heirs together. But Anuella knew too much; perhaps that knowledge was what had driven her mad. It had led to the emperor marrying a different woman, for one, and perhaps a number of other things being different as well.

"You are silent," Ricrot noted after a long minute had passed.

"I was thinking…" Julio began hesitantly. "I was thinking the code of chivalry Forsena was based on is somewhat out of fashion."

Ricrot turned then, expression unreadable. "Explain. That is an order," he barked out.

Julio took a deep breath, wondering if he had been screwed as soon as he entered the room. "Gato," he began. "The Halloway family… the family of priests in Gato has their influence diminished." _My family_, he thought, but left that unsaid. "Other temples of the land closed. The Neko warriors of the temple have little left to guard."

Anger flashed across Ricrot's face, but then, of all things, there was… _sadness_? _Regret_? Julio did not know. "You speak the truth," Ricrot finally answered, shoulders slumping. "We have lost some of our connection to the Goddess. I cannot afford to lose it all, to be distanced from her when she awakens… and that is why I wish you to take on a new role." Julio braced himself, wondering what the Emperor had in mind. "I want you to go to Gato. I want you to be the protector of the Priestess herself, a Holy Knight, as they once called your great-grandfather Olbohn."

Knots formed in Julio's stomach. Gato. Home, yes; but he had not been there since Airess… _Florina_, he reminded himself.

"_I am Jumi now,"_ she had told him, sadly leaving her family, her _child_, behind. _"My name is no longer. Remember me for what I have been, but do not mourn, for I will have far longer to mourn _you_." _Airessa, the daughter she left behind – and his own niece - was nearly seventeen, and therefore close to taking over the duties of the abbess.

_To go home… to be her protector… _it was something he hadn't even allowed himself to dream of. And here it was handed to him. He couldn't help but wonder if there was a hidden poison to the gift.

"I must warn you… should you choose to accept this, you will no longer be of Forsena," Ricrot's voice continued, snapping Julio back to attention. "You will belong to Gato henceforth, a knight of the Empire no longer. I make no guarantees as to what the future may hold, for you or for your family." He paused, shadows crossing his face. "I had hoped for the glory of our Empire to rise," he said, "but it seems we are heading into a dark age, an age that began when the Jumi left this world, taking everything that matters with them."

The Jumi. It was the wars that had driven them away, the same wars that Ricrot had propagated so avidly. Julio wondered darkly how much of the emperor's motivations were truly pure, but ultimately, it did not matter.

He had already made his decision, and he nodded his assent.

------------------------------------

Sierra knelt before the dragon, and Vadise leaned forward to create that gentle link of Mana that would complete the bond.

It had been hundreds of years that she had guarded the Mana Stone; centuries since Rolante had faded, since Forsena had thrived on the deceased carcasses of once-proud nations. _Nations that had belonged to the Goddess_. And only now had she found a dragoon, noting the irony that Sierra was from the very nation that had most changed the destiny of the world.

But then again, it was the actions of that country that had brought Sierra to her –

a woman who saw early on what was to happen, and correctly judged what was to come of it. Sierra had left her homeland, searching, and ultimately she had found Vadise.

Or rather, Vadise had found her, her drive, her dedication, pulling the dragon to her. It was something about Sierra's desire to pull things back together that seemed to tug along the strings of Mana itself - the ties that bind all life together.

"Are you ready for this?" Vadise intoned. "Do you know what it really means?"

Sierra raised her head. "Yes, my liege," she replied with a calm that belied her youth. "The desire to awaken, to _know_, the Goddess, as the dragons have done for centuries."

It caused a twinge of pain in Vadise, as she recalled her own broken connection, the connection that the fairies, the dragons, the Jumi and all creatures of Mana could not help but feel the lack. She had little power left to do things herself; she needed Sierra as much as Sierra needed her.

"Only a little more time, perhaps…" she half-whispered, but Sierra heard. "Prepare yourself then, my dragoon, for the final stretch."


	56. Legends: Desire to awaken

**56. Legends: Desire to awaken**

It was as if the Tree itself wished to welcome them. Despite its immense height, a path opened ahead, branches curved in a way that subtly beckoned them with the sheer clearness of the trail. A path that seemed laid out for them.

_Maybe it was, _Ariesa thought to herself, and her fear seemed to fall away as she pushed forward, encouraged but that seeming welcome.

At first, all she saw was lush, verdant leaves, branches breathing life, vibrant with Mana… but slowly, she realized things were not as they seemed. Dark clouds of grayish fog swirled languorously around the tree's enormous roots, even as rays of light drifted through the enormous foliage above, and the incessant chatters of the sproutlings carried a tone of sadness. Every once in a while, she would see one brush the Tree's branches almost tenderly with one of its leaf covered arms, and as other occupants of the tree's limbs began to be glimpsed in the background, Ariesa realized the truth.

The tree was _infected_ with distortions of Mana, the insects and birds one would normally expect to find in harmony with nature and the Goddess, instead appearing twisted, warped.

The sproutlings seemed to be anywhere and everywhere as she slowly climbed the Tree, their voices present even when she could see nothing. Their words were often incomprehensible, somehow melding with the words she felt as if the Goddess herself wished to speak to her, and she looked around for her chance to answer.

"Watch out!" instead came Daena's voice, and she ducked fearfully as an enormous, ugly mothlike thing swooped down on them. Daena shoved Ariesa out of the way, her flail whirling at the thing, finally knocking it out of the air, exposing its vulnerable side. She pulled back for a killing blow, and with a squeal, the insect nearly the size of the neko herself struck back.

It lurched for her, even with one wing hanging awkwardly at its side, and tumbled Daena to the ground with it. She was knocked off the path, and Ariesa cringed before realizing she had not, in fact, fallen out of the tree, but merely tumbled some distance down. Still, the crack she heard, and Daena's groan of pain, told her that her friend was not without injuries.

Ariesa went running back down towards her, hearing others behind her, but Daena merely waved her off with a quick flicker of her hand. "I'm fine," she insisted, her voice at once both frustrated, joking, and determined.

"How could you make such an impulsive decision?" Ariesa demanded, her tone far more serious. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed she and her companions were not the only ones concerned for Daena… a gaggle of sproutlings were gathering around, looking on in consertation.

_Thoughts of the Goddess,_ Ariesa thought. _The Goddess is checking if Daena's okay… but was She the one who pushed her back in the first place?_

"You're almost there!" a sproutling squealed to Daena.

Daena only looked up at the enormous canopy of trees above, and laughed ironically, before collapsing into wheezing breaths. "Almost there? I hardly got anywhere at all."

"You're closer than you think to an unexpected destiny," another replied, and Ariesa saw her own expression of surprise and confusion mirrored on Daena's face. "You've had the longest to think about it all. You see the light. The Mana Goddess is light, and thus could not see herself. But you can see yourself now."

Daena gaped forward in shock, but after a long moment, she nodded slowly, acceptance of… something settling into her.

Escad knelt down beside Ariesa, furrowed his brow with unexpected concern. "We can't leave you here," he told Daena, half worried, half near-scolding.

"I can handle it," Daena replied nonchalantly. "Well, Escad, I guess you're doing it for us both, now." She turned to Ariesa. "You're my best friend. You had better make it. Don't think I'll let you off he hook so easily."

Ariesa laughed despite herself. "I hardly thought so."

------------------------------------

"Follow me!" one sproutling ordered churlishly. It gestured towards an opening in the trunk, and they entered a hollow cylinder shelved by something like giant lichens, soft to the touch but more than firm enough to stand on. They gave softly at each footfall, and the quiet echoes were almost enough to lull her into a sense of peace.

_Almost_. Ariesa wondered if the tree was, in fact, the protective haven she had hoped it would be. She gazed up, blackness blocking the view up above, leaving her wondering what was hidden in the darkness ahead.

Or the darkness around, for that matter. She could have sword she saw flickering, glowing eyes out in the empty space beyond, and her eyes flitted instinctively back and forth for what might attack them next.

With a sudden rash of sharp squeals, she found out. From that blackness emerged a horde of sharp-fanged, lizard-like creatures, bearing down on her with lightning-quickness.

But someone was faster. With a howl, Sierra had leapt into the air in a instant, neatly tossing a knife into the creature nearest to Ariesa, then neatly backflipping to stab another from behind, before Ariesa even had a chance to work her spear loose.

Behind her, she heard the sounds of other weapons being unleashed, as she feinted and stabbed before her; but there was no need. Every time one got close, Sierra was there, launching herself into the middle of the horde of mutated reptiles, knives flashing, slicing, swirling.

Ariesa saw the one too late to warn the dragoon, as one leapt forward to sink its teeth deep into Sierra's arm. She screamed in pain as its jaws clamped down, dropping her weapons in fright before its venom could begin to petrify the blood in her veins.

From out of nowhere Larc appeared, with one vicious motion neatly decapitating the creature latched onto his sister. Its eyes grew wide before glazing over, its grip growing slack as the disembodied head fell to the ground. Larc scornfully kicked it off the edge, tumbling somewhere into the inky depths below.

He grabbed his sister's arm forcefully, but the telltale sickly yellowing of the flesh was already to be seen, slowly fading to purple and then to stone-dead grey. Sierra tugged her arm away, rubbing it gently. "It's only an arm, Larc," she protested, turning her head so he would not see her face. "The rest of me will be fine."

"It's not good enough," growled Larc, grabbing Sierra forcefully by the shoulders, forcing her to look at him. "This was my chance to pay you back…" he faltered.

"Maybe there's a way to heal it?" protested Lisa.

"There is no magic that can heal," insisted Larc. "Only Jumi tears have ever had that power…" He turned towards the Jumi with a plaintive expression on his face.

"I am a knight. I have never had tears," Elazul said gently. Beside and behind him, Blackpearl hung her head, her expression filled with shame that she could do no better.

Lisa stepped forward. "But maybe…" she paused, laying her hands on Sierra's arms tremulously. "I'm not sure, but…"

Sierra turned towards the girl maternally. "Don't be afraid to try, Lisa."

Lisa gulped, and nodded. "I mean, it wouldn't heal it, but I think I could… maybe seal it off, until we have a better idea?" She turned to her brother for encouragement. "Or it might be able to recover it on its own. I'm not sure if I'll be very good at it. It might kind of hurt."

"Pain is just something we have to endure, young woman," Sierra told her. "I will face what I am given."

Lisa nodded, and Larc and Elazul gently helped Sierra to recline on the ground. Lisa leaned in, and for a long moment, there was no sound but the breezes outside the trunk.

Ariesa could only feel the faintest whispers, and she looked at Elazul quizzically, trying to figure out what was happening, but he only stared firmly ahead. Lisa seemed focused, determined and frustrated by turns, and Ariesa was afraid her young apprentice could do nothing, when suddenly she saw a light first encase, then blaze around Sierra's injured arm.

Sierra screamed then, the sound echoing up and down the hollowed trunk as her body seized and collapsed against the ground once again. Lisa fell backwards in response. "I'm sorry, that wasn't very smooth… I didn't do it right…"

"Hush," Larc ordered her, gently placing a hand where Sierra's face had broken out in sweat. "You have done it, girl. She will be fine. Look." Lisa gaped openly, but sure enough, the putrid skin seemed to be fading before their very eyes.

They waited for long minutes, as Sierra regained her breath and opened her eyes once again. "It worked," she told them, "but whatever Lisa did… it took a lot of my own strength as well. I can go no further with you today."

Ariesa leaned over the dragoon, feeling the tears forming. _The second friend today who has fallen protecting me._

"Don't worry, Ariesa," Sierra said, reaching one hand up tenderly, as if reading her thoughts. "It was what I was supposed to do. I can do no more. It is up to you."

"The goddess used her light to outline herself in shadow," muttered the voice of sproutling, its location unable to discern as echoes distributed the words all around them. Ariesa felt chills run down her spine.

_Shadow, indeed_. That shadow was falling, and it was covering them all.

Larc rose with a snarl. "Whoever falls, we will get them on the way down." Ariesa wished she could share his confidence that they would make it back… but frankly she was starting to doubt.

Sierra motioned Ariesa closer, and her voice fell to a whisper, she clutching her arm and wincing in a pain she wanted to pretend did not exist. "Even now, even at the Tree itself, the Elemental Spirits are afraid to come out," Sierra told her seriously, her head flickering around. "We're on our own here."

"I know," Ariesa said sadly. She looked down at Sierra, thinking of all the other woman had seen and experienced, and still she had not given up. She grabbed her hand, hoping for some of Sierra's courage to leak into her.

On the other side, Larc knelt over his sister. "Larc," Sierra said softly. "You must now take on the responsibilities of us both. It is your turn."

Larc only nodded solemnly, and stood to go with no further goodbye. _Maybe, _Ariesa wondered, _there was no need for one._

She herself left Sierra with a quick squeeze of a hand, and a whispered promise to return. Sierra only waved her off. "Leave me, and go forward. I will be fine."

Ariesa rose, reluctantly, leaving the dragoon alone to muse on promises she had made so long ago; and Ariesa wondered if Sierra realized she could still be heard. "I did my part, Vadise," she murmured to the empty air. "I got them this far."

------------------------------------

The sproutlings now seemed to be anywhere and everywhere, seen and unseen, their chatterings urging them ever forward as the path became less and less defined. Ariesa's imagination was positively running away with her, staring at the lush vegetation as they emerged into sunlight once again, expecting some new horror to leap out of it.

She cast her eyes down at one of the forks where the gnarled and twisted branches wrapped around each other, only to see the ground far below, and beyond, the sea that had created an island out of nothing. _Too late to go back,_ Ariesa thought to herself.

Impulsively, she looked to Elazul, and he felt her eyes upon him. He turned to her with a forced smile of reassurance - but it made her feel better nevertheless.

Beyond Elazul, Blackpearl stood poised, and as much as she was the picture of the ancient, dignified Jumi Knight that Ariesa had come to regard… still, there was something in her at this moment, that Ariesa couldn't help but see Pearl as well. Two persons, both a part of her life, yet one and the same, and she was not sure she really knew how to put them together in her head. And she was even less sure that Blackpearl did.

The sproutlings' squeals alerted her, even before the buzz of hornets reached her ears. No, not simple hornets; rabid bugs, mad multifaceted eyes focusing on the prey their stingers were ready to attack.

Escad had his sword out, but could only look around in confusion. "How the hell are we supposed to fight these things?" he cursed, to no one in particular. "There's too damn many, and they're too small!"

"Magic!" came Bud's voice gleefully, and Ariesa turned to him in surprise.

He only grinned in return. "Ready, Lisa?" he asked, turning to his sister.

She waffled a bit. "I'm not sure…"

"Lisa," Bud urged, "work with me here. Try something different. You have to give into the Goddess a little bit."

"We don't have the instruments," she insisted.

"We don't need them." He reached for his sister's hand. "C'mon. We'll do this together."

She swallowed, and nodded. Bud reached one hand forward, and…

It was like nothing Ariesa had ever seen, ever felt before. Behind her, she heard Blackpearl's gasp. The sky blackened, only to be filled suddenly with a thousand shooting stars, raining down on angrily buzzing insects. The Mana struck true towards its target, monstrous bugs popping in midair, hardened casings shattered into pieces to small to be seen.

"What was that?" Escad gaped in open wonder.

Bud grinned openly, but beside him, Lisa wobbled slightly. Thoma was there before her brother even noticed, holding her up for support. She leaned on him gratefully.

Blackpearl was there in a second, placing her hands on either side of the frightened girl's face. "It's alright," she said, her voice oddly soothing. "You just overexerted yourself."

"Is my sister okay?" worried Bud. "It's not my fault, is it?"

"It's not," Blackpearl told him. "She pushed herself. She needed to push herself. We all need to exceed our limits every once in a while."

"The Goddess's vision began the creation of the universe," a sproutling mumbled. "You really should listen to her."

"No!" Lisa cried. "I don't want to! I can do it! I can keep going!"

"No, you _can't_," Blackpearl told her firmly. "You might not like it, but if it is the choice you have to make…" She trailed off.

"It's okay, Lisa," Thoma told her. "I'm be here to watch over you. I'm staying with you." Bud looked… pouty… of all things, and a thought began to form in Ariesa's brain, developing rapidly into absolute certainty.

Lisa sunk into his grasp, finally giving in. "Go on," she urged Ariesa.

"But…" Ariesa waffled doubtfully. Elazul grabbed her shoulder and she turned to face him. He said nothing, but his expression reminded her of what she needed to know.

"Alright," she said, regaining her courage. "We keep going."

------------------------------------

The path ran through the trunk once again, hushed voices of sproutlings urging them forward, even as Ariesa's tension approached near critical. She focused on every sign of death, of decay, with fear, wondering how much worse things could get.

Escad's head swiveled. "I feel something…"

From nowhere in the gloom, leapt… _something_. Her first thought was of Shadoles, but these creatures seemed to be possessed of at least some sort of rudimentary arms and legs. One of them opened its mouth wide, and out spewed a noxious, choking liquid.

Ariesa found herself pulled to the ground, Elazul's body laying over her, shielding her below the poison. She heard a rasping cough from behind – Larc, most likely – but shrieked when she saw Bud, still standing nonchalantly.

"_Bud_!" she cried, stretching out an arm though Elazul would not let her free. "Get down!"

Bud only turned to her with that silly, goofy grin he sometimes wore, and fear and worry gripped her heart. "It's alright, Ariesa. I know what to do."

"You can't - " Ariesa gasped in protest, but it had already begun. She felt Elazul's core thrum harder against her back as Mana began to churn around them, not the same hesitant flow that Lisa had produced, but something more confident, more powerful. More _true_.

"A Spell of Truth," she head Blackpearl's voice. "Most impressive. The like had not been seen in centuries."

"He's convincing the Goddess herself to fight back," Escad noted in wonder.

Escad was right, Ariesa realized. It could not be anything less, as rose-covered branches detached themselves from the inside of the trunk somewhere above, diving down to pierce the monsters with razor-sharp thorns. Minutes seemed to stretch out as the Goddess herself fought off the infection with her, until finally all were destroyed and the branches crept back languorously as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Elazul let Ariesa up, she calmly dusting herself off. "How…" she began. "How did you do such a thing?"

"Everything in the world has a common beginning – her light," squeaked a sproutling in response.

Bud turned to them, incredibly pleased with himself. "She need her chaos, but She needs her light. She just has to figure out when to use one and the other," he told them. "I've been kind of figuring out how to do it myself. You have to be a little creative, but after that, it's not so hard."

Elazul only solemnly reached his hand out, and Bud allowed the Jumi to shake his hand solemnly. Ariesa looked at her charge for the first time in as long as she could remember – _really_ looked at him. He wasn't really fully a man, but not a boy any longer.

"I tried to push Lisa this way," Bud said, a bit sadly and with surprising maturity. "But she needs a little more to go, and I guess I'm not really the one who's there for her anymore…" His voice trailed off, but Ariesa understood well enough.

"Come along, Bud," she urged.

"I'll stay," he announced gravely. "Someone has to stand watch."

"But – " Ariesa began to protest, but Larc shushed her. "Let him be, Ariesa. He needs to do this."

"Don't worry, Ariesa," Bud told her gravely. "Everything can still work for the best, no matter what it looks like now."

She looked into the young man's blue eyes, and nodded.

------------------------------------

The party was far smaller than it had been when they had entered the realm of the Goddess. _Had that truly been only hours ago? _Ariesa wondered. They traversed branches ever higher and higher, and beyond the endless foliage that shielded them, the sun could still be seen, only barely past its peak.

_The Mana Holy Day,_ Ariesa thought, sneaking a glance at Blackpearl. _How holy will this day be indeed, with all this blood on its hands?_

Elazul was saying something to Blackpearl, and Escad strode beside her, his expression in that darkened frown that seemed ever eternal. _And he is the Holy Knight, _ she continued silently to herself. _Is "holy" really what we expect? Is even the Goddess herself something pure and true?_

She wanted to voice her doubts aloud, but she had the feeling no one would have the answer.

Trying to distract herself, she found her eyes drifting to Larc. He had suffered more than she ever would in the name of trying to do right. It made her want to weep with the thought.

"I hear something," Larc burst out, turning to her.

Elazul slid his sword out warily. "I think he's right."

"Where?" Ariesa's head swiveled around, but then a wailing shriek came from up above.

A form blotted out the sun, and Ariesa saw the enormous shape of a bird, something like the Cancun Bird that had carried them to Lucemia, but nothing of that creature's gentleness. Its eagle-like eyes were narrow, and pointedly focused on its prey, as pulled back, prepared to swoop down.

Ariesa tensed, grabbing onto Elazul as he did to her. She looked around frantically, but the bird, with the keen sense of any powerful predator, had chosen to attack them on a slender outcropping, with nowhere to run. She pulled Elazul closer, and braced for the impact.

Out of nowhere, Escad dove frantically in front of the bird, and it squealed as it collided with the unanticipated irritation. Escad rolled out of the grip of its talons, only to leap up once again.

"Come and get me!" he shouted, and the bird squealed in response.

_He's barely using his sword,_ Ariesa thought frantically, madly. Escad seemed barely interested in fighting the thing, only trying to draw it away from she and Elazul, dodging it with leaps and slides. He feinted, parried, but rarely attacked.

"What are you doing?" Ariesa shrieked, as Blackpearl came up from behind and put the creature out of commission with a single powerful strike. It crumpled to the ground, and a final grotesque swipe finished its life.

Escad had his hands on knees, breathing heavily. "It's a trap, don't you see?" he told Ariesa. His eyes were fervid, panicked, but a t the same time, she realized he had hit on part of the truth. "She _wants_ us to fight. She wants us to splinter, to wear ourselves down. We cannot respond the way she expects."

"How can we do otherwise?" demanded Ariesa.

A sproutling wandered randomly, idiotically, across the scene, regarding anything and nothing in particular. "The desire to know oneself became shadow and separated us," the sproutling intoned solemnly, and Escad only _stared_.

He rose, struggling, fingering his blade oddly. "I will stay here. A distraction." Ariesa opened her mouth as if to speak, but a quick motion from Blackpearl silenced her. "Elazul. Make sure she makes it to the end."

Elazul frowned at first, but nodded slowly, grudgingly. Blackpearl, oddly, bowed her head deeply to him, in a gesture even Ariesa knew was one of profoundest respect among the Jumi, knight to knight.

Escad's face split into something very nearly resembling a smile. "Don't worry about me." He looked around, but Ariesa had no idea what he was looking at. "There's plenty of Mana here. I doubt the Goddess will off me so easily. Keep your trust, and you will be safe."

------------------------------------

Sky was breaking above them, and Ariesa realized with discomfort they were almost to the top.

"We're too close," she whispered to Elazul. "This isn't the last fight."

He nodded solemnly, then suddenly gripped her left hand in his right, affection and encouragement leaking through the gesture. Impulsively, she patted the hilt of the Sword of Mana at her side.

Suddenly, she grabbed that handle in fear, seeing what lay in wait before them.

"Dragons," Blackpearl breathed behind her, and Ariesa's stomach dropped, remembering mutilated, bloodied corpses in the castle of Drakonis. Creatures who had died at her hand, out of necessity, for her to survive and be released from enslavement.

"No…" she whispered. "I don't want to…" She took a few frightened steps back, and the dragons approached her menacingly.

"You don't have to. Stand back," Larc growled.

"But - " Ariesa protested, only to be shushed by Larc. "No buts," he told her with deathly solemnity. "This is my mission, my destiny. _This is my redemption_." He raised his axe. "Escad was right. You have to make it, and it is for the rest of us to carve your way. Whatever happens… my sins are my own, however they may have happened. And _I_ will choose how to atone for it." Larc sniffed the air as if Mana itself had a scent. "You are very close to the Sanctuary."

"Come with us. For Sierra's sake," Ariesa begged.

"No," Larc answered gravely. "It is not for me to enter. I see that now… This is my final advice to you, something I have learned from the dragons themselves," he finished.

Beyond, the dragons snarled, and a wave of Larc's axe made them shrink back. It would not be for long, Ariesa knew. "Do not detest the darkness," he intoned, bracing himself as the dragons slunk back towards him, eyeing him warily. "Good and evil are only the way we perceive things. It is the two together, not either one, that makes each other matter. Ultimately, life, and Mana, will always find a way to survive." He turned to the encroaching monsters. "Even if some of our lives are lost along the way."

The dragons finally lurched forward. "_GO_!" Larc roared, and Ariesa ran, pulled in front by Elazul, pushed from behind by Blackpearl.

"You cannot save him!" the Jumi woman yelled. Ariesa only nodded, through tears that were no longer even trying to hide, tears that washed now freely down her cheeks.

She did not know how long she ran, her ears painfully attuned to the sounds of the fight behind her, not sure what Larc's fate was and finally fleeing so far that she could hear no more. She stopped, gasping, to find Blackpearl's hand on her shoulder.

The Jumi woman only uttered one word. "Look."

She did, and saw before her a vine-covered stone gate, with a small, unassuming stone bridge crossing a gap to its entry. Clouds could be seen floating calmly below, as if they were crossing the gate to Heaven itself. Pale stone was crumbled away in places, but still somehow bore the marks of permanence, of survival. Of something eternal.

"Is this…" she breathed, afraid to even say what she thought.

Blackpearl nodded, and when her voice came out, it was reticent, almost strangled. "It is," she replied. "The gate to the true Sanctuary of Mana."

------------------------------------

It was a hushed trio that crossed under that ancient, untouched gate.

The structures inside were elegantly carved stone, a path cobbled in that same luminescent stone circumventing the edges of the treetop where this strange shrine existed. Plants of a thousand colors burst lushly from the intervening soil, decorating the road before them. The sky beyond seemed almost artificial, plain, next to that immensity.

"How did this get here?" Ariesa asked, not really expecting an answer.

Blackpearl was there to provide the answer. "This is the remnants of the ancient Holyland," she murmured reverently. "Bits and pieces of what Anise sought, and used. Alive, again, and awaiting the new era, the new Goddess."

"If that is what it was then… then what is it all now?" Elazul questioned.

Blackpearl paused. "The last remnants of the old goddess, here kept in an immovable and eternal state. Waiting. But now…" she faltered here. "The time has come. A thousand years now, she has waited. It is the place she has remained. _It is the place from which to awaken the Goddess._"

Blackpearl's words resonated with her, and for the first time since she had begun to ascend the Tree, Ariesa felt a sense of true, pure hope. Reverence consumed her, blotting out any uglier emotions she wished to have, and her eyes seemed more open than ever, seeing more than she could have ever imagined.

"Look," Ariesa breathed, gripping Elazul's arm involuntarily. He turned, and saw what she saw.

Roses, hundreds of them, from which the sand rose of Geo had been copied. Only, these were no stone, but full of life… like the man beside her.

She wanted to reach out and touch one, touch them all, both petals and thorns. _Good and bad, all rolled into one_, she wondered randomly. _Do we choose between them? Is choice a privilege… or would we prefer not to be bothered with having to make a choice?_

A small part of her wished for the ignorance she once had, no choices to make, no consequences to suffer. But she knew that shade of herself was long since shattered, that it could not, would not ever be her again. She was no longer a girl who merely took what was given; now, she looked for the things she wanted, things she desired more than anything. "I can choose," she blurted out, without knowing why.

"Oh?" Blackpearl turned to her, the barest hint of warmth breaking her otherwise troubled visage. "Yes, you can, but how many times have I wished I didn't have a choice?" Ariesa stared at her in shock and confusion, and Blackpearl turned away, her eyes growing distant.

Elazul brushed his right arm against one of the delicately fluted pillars that held up nothing, but merely seemed to reach plaintively to the heavens. "The Mana…" he trailed off.

"It's overwhelming," Blackpearl breathed, finishing the sentence for him.

Ariesa was no Jumi, but… she knew what they were talking about. Here, it seemed to her almost thicker than air, in this place that was something of history itself. Underlying it was the vaguest sense of discomfort, of danger, no longer something that felt of mundane creatures, mere physical fight. It was something more true, more fundamental, more internal… more essentially inescapable. It was something of the soul itself.

"The Goddess," she breathed. "Her soul is here."

Elazul turned to her in surprise. "I don't feel that at all," he asked. "Are you sure?"

"I am," she breathed. Blackpearl looked at her with surprise, and something almost like… jealousy? It did not matter, as Ariesa lost herself in the souls that spoke to her. Dead souls, lost souls… part of all was here, and they seemed to want to cry out to her. Ariesa shrank instinctively towards Elazul – or did he shrink towards her?

It did not matter, as Blackpearl stepped forward. She touched her core, and the voices silenced.

They wandered in circles among those ancient, crumbling structures, the path ever spiraling, ever drawing them inward. They traced the same path over and over countless times, until simple frustration set in.

"It's not a dead end," grumbled Ariesa, "but it might as well be. There's nowhere left to go."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Blackpearl replied, her voice somehow distant, dreamy, in a way that was so essentially Pearl. "Look. Listen."

Reluctantly, Ariesa obeyed, and after a moment… _sproutlings_ emerged from…absolutely nowhere, as far as Ariesa could tell. Dozens, scores, of the odd creatures gathering towards them, surrounding them, and Ariesa had not the slightest idea why.

"She _knows_," the sproutlings squeaked fearfully, leering towards Blackpearl, voices one on top of the other. "She knows all our secrets."

"Hardly all," Blackpearl responded dryly, "but a great many yes. I know your secrets, Goddess. Let me pass."

An opening seemed to appear from nowhere, and as one, a gaggle of sproutlings shrieked incomprehensibly, the piercing whine of their voices causing pain to Ariesa's ears. "We have no choice," they whispered as one, voices suddenly dry as dust. "You are the same as us. You are a creature of Mana."

The face of the Lady Blackpearl sunk into a stony, expressionless state. "We are near," she whispered, to no one in particular, and took a step forward.

"People with pure hearts go to a whole new world," a single sproutling voice intoned, barely audible.

Ariesa and Elazul followed, finding themselves atop another stone platform, superficially no different from the ones that came before. Elazul paced, agitated, in tight circles around the pillar that stood in the center, a shattered, unrecognizable thing that might have once been a sculpture., for his part, was pacing, agitated, in tight circles. "I feel something," he said, his breath sharp. Ariesa cautioned him, but he wasn't listening, stepping forward and walking in circles, hand reaching out for something that did not appear to be visible.

Ariesa only peered at the wrecked block of stone before her. There was something… she could almost see what it had once had been, something she craved more than she knew how to understand… _Broken_, _split_, the words occurred to her, without knowing what it meant.

"It's the center of Mana," Blackpearl breathed. "The point in space where the Goddess exists, one who waits for the breath of destiny." Her eyes grew a bit… fervent. She paused, cringing slightly. "But it feels… wrong… like the Mana is distorted..."

"The barriers are breaking," answered a voice from nowhere. Not the high-pitched, shrill voice of a sproutling, but a female voice with a depth and regality to rival Blackpearl herself.

Blackpearl gasped in surprise and shock, and for the first time ever, Ariesa saw fear in her eyes. Not thoughtful, analytical assessment, but a pure emotional response… the sort of thing she would have expected from Pearl. "The Goddess," she half-whispered.

A figure appeared above them, amorphous, indistinct, a seething mass of colors flickering in a way that suggested in one moment calm, in another moment anger. One word echoed over them. "_Shayla_."

It was Pearl's ubiquitous dreamlike expression that crossed the face of Lady Blackpearl now, as she tilted her head upwards towards the vision before them. "My Goddess," she replied languorously, half-entranced.

The figure flickered into the vaguest notion of a human face. "Lost Priestess. Lost princess. Lost Moon. How I wish I knew you better." The expression contorted into sadness and discontent.

Lady Blackpearl reached out a hand, dropping it as she found it touched nothing, but the Goddess responded nevertheless.

"We have been waiting," Blackpearl replied cautiously.

"It has been so long… the ones who have gone…" A sigh escaped. "I dream of _HER_, I remember _HER_… the one who saved me, and the others with her. A dark, slightly demonic expression crossed her face. "I _WANT_ her back. The one that held me to this world, only to find myself splintered, unsure once again…"

The mist became swirls of color, then the absence thereof; the hazy mist almost seeming to swallow light, and Ariesa cried out involuntarily as one of those cloudy tendrils reached for _her_. The dissolved being turned to her, and spoke in a harsh, guttural tone. "Do you fear the _DARK_, child of Mana?" it rasped. "Have you been there? Do you understand? Do you want me to _SHOW_ you?" A vaporous tendril waggled towards Ariesa, and she cringed as it nearly brushed her. At her side, she felt Elazul tense up. "Who are you?" the fearful voice asked, suddenly seeming almost… _confused_.

Suddenly, the mist snapped into a sharply humanoid form… genderless, featureless, but there nevertheless. The Goddess whipped around to regard Elazul with eyes now notably covered in milky, blind film. It did not matter. "And _this_ one. Of Mana himself, I see. Shayla, what have you brought to me?"

Blackpearl remained unmoving, silent, but Ariesa noted the color, whatever there was, had drained from her face, leaving the woman ever more pale and ghostly that either she or Pearl had been.

"These…" the voice descended into mumbling and murmuring, before becoming clear once again. "But these... it is as if I knew them already. The blood of all six of my heroes..."

_Something was terribly wrong here_. Ariesa wasn't sure when, but Elazul had crept behind her to encircle her in his arms. He did not want to fight; it was as if it was too late for that, and now, he only tried to protect. That in and of itself was more worrisome than she could say.

The figure looked past Ariesa, and a tilted of her head showed it looked straight into Elazul's eyes. Elazul returned that piercing blue-eyed gaze she knew so well.

"So I find you at last," a sigh was heard. Resignation, pain, and a hundred other emotions were concealed in that intonation. "The one who can awaken me from the dreams that have confined me."

The thing that wanted to be the Goddess turned to Blackpearl. "The moon, to balance the sun that is the tree… You have arrived to me at last. The first daughter of my highest priestess, destined to take on the shroud… to be my keeper of treasures, my reaver of souls…" The blinded gaze swept away from Blackpearl, its voice now echoing in Ariesa's mind, as one with the beat of her heart, and Elazul's core, so close to her. "I must have _these_. They are _mine_. Are they ready?" The voice trickled off into depth and darkness.

Ariesa looked in incredulity at the woman who had been at times both older and younger sister to her; and to Elazul, as both mentor and guardian. Blackpearl paused for a long moment, swallowing nervously, and glanced from one to another with a pain so deep it made Ariesa want to cry all over again.

Lady Blackpearl dropped her head in shame, and disgrace, before the simple words were uttered allowed. "They are," Blackpearl replied… and Ariesa's heart dropped.

"Then come to me, my children," said the voice, now cackling as the cloud in which it was encased turned sickening shades of orange and green. Ariesa screamed involuntarily as a wind rose to prickle her skin, then to _burn_, hot as fire, cold as ice, before she felt her own self begin to splinter. Somewhere distantly, Blackpearl's sad expression held in her vision for a moment before blurring into nothingness. But in that last moment of solidity, she felt Elazul's right hand grasp her own with all the force of stone, of the very earth itself, holding on for every moment he could.

She squeezed back with all the strength of her own paltry flesh, and consciousness shattered into a million pieces.

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**Author's Note: **HOT DAMN! I struggled with this chapter for a while to achieve the appropriate intensity, and suddenly… it came out of positively nowhere. Or maybe my moody-mood. Whatever.

Anyway, there is only ONE update left… I'm feeling gleeful and excited. Mostly, I am working on making the dark Goddess… JUST ABOUT THE SCARIEST THING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN.

I mean, wouldn't an eternal deity with a vengeance freak you out, too?


	57. Secrets: Will to trust

**57. Secrets: Will to trust**

_The Glass Desert._

_Such a fancy name, for such a desolate place_, thought Angela. Worse than even the snowfields of Altena, in which life still found a way to survive. She shuddered with the memory, of herself, long ago, being stuck out there, alone, afraid, nowhere to turn.

Now, of course, things were different.

Mere yards away, she could hear the chattering of her friends by the fire. Kevin, speaking only occasionally, but when he did, his words had emotion and meaning. Carlie, chattering in the voice of someone just on the edge between woman and girl. Hawk, cracking jokes as he always did. And the powerful, confident voice of Duran; Duran, the one she cared for in a way she found it hard to admit to.

_All but Lise_. Lise was not with the others; she was here with Angela, both women laying in the crystallized silicon sand to look at the stars above. Angela snuck a glance at her companion, only to see her absorbed in the heavens, and swung her own head upwards once again, hesitant to admit to the inner thoughts that were churning through her, grateful that the Fairy in her head was at least keeping quiet.

They were two very different people, she and Lise. They hadn't initially gotten along… but now, she realized, that Lise was perhaps the best friend she had. She wasn't so sentimental as to voice it… but there it was.

She knew why that mattered. Passion, attraction… those were things she understood. But what about the more fundamental things, the bonds of life that strung them all together?

Angela had _learned_. It took a will to trust, to surrender, to love… The more she worked with her magic, the more she realized these simple truths, of life, of Mana itself.

They were from different places; they had different purposes. Lise was a warrior by upbringing, by nature; but even so, that drew out of the pure commitment to the Goddess that the Amazons cherished. Angela herself, on the other hand… she, like most Altenans, was pragmatic. They took charge of Mana; they were its guardians, and they pretty much left the Goddess to herself.

But strength lay in neither, yet rather in both, working together, complementing, harmonizing. Without those skills to understand, to balance… without all those who mattered to her, those she place her trust and caring in… she would not have made it to this place, this night, tomorrow ready to enter the mountain known as Dragon's Hole, to confront the foe called the Dragon Emperor. Without those others... she would be alone, and _dead_, most likely.

"It's nights like these that create memories," she whispered aloud. "Secrets that no one else in the world will know."

"Time does not forget," Lise answered. "Those memories create the imagination of tomorrow, and from that, legends are born."


	58. Legends: Will to trust

**58. Legends: Will to trust**

Elazul groaned, shaking off an uncomfortable feeling of being chopped into microscopic slivers. Stretching his muscles casually, as when one wakes up before they do, he was relieved to find everything seemed to have reassembled properly.

He clenched his fists reflexively, and in the right one, he was surprised to find Ariesa's hand still.

He couldn't let go of it, but rather pulled himself onto left hand and right knee, crawling awkwardly towards the woman beside him. She was still unconscious. She did not have a core to insulate her from that tremendous blast of Mana from the Goddess.

But _he_ did, and he reached into it to find whatever he could for her. It was strangely empty, nothing of the world around him, not even Pearl or the darker thrum of Blackpearl. All he could find in there was _himself_, and it was that he pushed through the stone arm to the flesh and blood fingers it grasped.

For a moment, he wasn't sure if he was doing anything, but… it worked. Ariesa opened her eyes gradually, a quick minute before clarity crossed them, and only another minute before she was able to shakily pull herself upright.

"Where are we?" she asked. The ground before them was a reflective, mirror-like surface; it was not water, but beyond, plants protruded as if from a silvery swamp. They were brightly colored in pinks and purples, but there was something about their grotesque shape that made Elazul think of _rot_.

The Tree was still visible… sort of. It was a shadow, in a way that Elazul could not be sure if it was a distant image, or a complete fabrication. Above them, a night sky opened, dark clouds crossing an enormous moon whose light gave the entire scene an eerie, unnatural goal.

_The goddess used the moon to outline herself in shadow, _Elazul remembered, and tensed despite himself.

And below that gargantuan moon… an odd, oblong shape, something like a cocoon but woven in dark silks, stood eerily upright. It set Elazul's hair on end.

"No idea where we might be. Something having to do with the damn Goddess, I suppose," he told Ariesa. " I have the feeling we're not leaving until she lets us, either."

Ariesa stood awkwardly. Her spear was strapped to her back, now that she knew how to whip it out in a moment; the Sword of Mana remained at her belt, practically another accessory since they had entered the barrier.

Ariesa suddenly gasped. "I just remembered… Blackpearl… Pearl…"

"She betrayed us," Elazul said, grimly, harshly.

"Why would she do such a thing?" Ariesa asked, hurt in her eyes. Elazul wished he had an answer for her, but he could only hang his head.

He had little time to dwell on that thought, as a subtle shift of motion caught the corner of his vision, followed shortly by a surprised gasp from Ariesa. The dark cocoon before them began to quiver, movement visible inside as the skeins stretched and contorted, something inside clearly ready to emerge.

"It's an egg," she whispered anxiously to him, "and it's hatching…"

It _was_, and quite fabulously, at that. The silken threads that comprised the black casing splintered, cracks and fissures forming within, and sudden clouds of noxious green gases spewing out, hissing. A light brighter than the sun suddenly burst out, shattering the prison, and leaving something far more horrifying in its wake.

The figure that stood, wobbling, before them was bipedal, vaguely humanoid… but past that, few true traces of humanity could be seen. Its features were grotesque, contorted, a hooked nose below eyes narrow and slit, and only darkness visible within. Wild, leaflike projections emanated from its head like a mane, and arms and legs ended in clawed, taloned appendages, while dozens of other slender leaves writhed out of the creature's back, whipping angrily in midair, snaking first at random, but slowly but surely seeming to be reaching for _them_. The visage contorted into utter, irrational hate, as it turned to the humans before it with something between a growl and a hiss.

Elazul recoiled, in both disgust and fear. This was no vaporous spirit form of the Goddess. This was something far more concrete - very real, very dangerous, and very _angry_.

Her empty eye sockets flickered, revealing something akin to swirls of emotion within - and Elazul understood what Pokiehl, what the sproutlings, what Escad, what the wisdoms and the fairies and the dragons had all been telling him, all giving him a piece of the puzzle. "_The tree has wisdom and wants_," he whispered to Ariesa, "_but she does not understand them. She desires, but she is scared of that desire. She is unwise, unfinished, alienated from her own Mana, as is the rest of the world – and is in more pain than any of us because of it._"

"She cannot trust," replied Ariesa, sadly. "She has no will to do so."

The Goddess _hissed_ once again, then spoke, a grating, whining sound. "Who _are_ you? Why are you _here_?" She stared forward, straight at Elazul's core. "What do you _dare_ bring to me, merely a fragment of everything I remember… what has happened? _What has become of the world?"_ she uttered, voice shifting into a sudden plaintive poignancy, before turning to Elazul with a snarl as her expression contorted once again into open hate. "Guardian of Mana… _you_ are to blame!" she cried wildly, before turning to Ariesa, head snapping back and forth between the two of them. "I begged you to keep the faith, to _remember_ me, to _need_ me, to _find_ me… and now… and _NOW_… now I cannot remember _myself_!"

"Many have struggled for your remembrance!" Elazul protested, but his words seemed to fall on deaf ears, as the Goddess growled at them, a feral, rabid sound. Elazul was left only staring in shock. _Was the hope the world placed in the Goddess… misplaced?_ he wondered. _Was she really doing her best?_ All this time, they had been driven by the hopeful picture of a Goddess eagerly waiting to rejoin the world and shower it with her love, her Mana… and _this_ was what they found instead.

"We wanted to keep the connection," Ariesa said softly. "We are still part of life, of Mana, as are you."

"_Mana_? Its disruption… its fluctuations… she screeched, "make it difficult for me to _formmmmm_…" True to her words, she flickered, her figure before them inconstant, ever-changing, now settling before sharply inverting and refolding. The green of her leaves faded to dark, sickly browns and blacks, almost ready to drop off and decay, before bursting into vibrant color once again. "I was once a fairy, part of the Goddess… but now I am the Goddess?" the last was a nearly pleading question. "_What am I?"_ She looked frantically, first at one, then the other, of the humans before her.

Elazul's throat ran dry. If even She did not know… He wanted to answer, to say anything, to comfort Her through her difficult birth… but she stiffened, and divine temper flared once again.

"I am the _LIGHT_," the voice intoned with an nearly ear-piercing squeal. "I am the _DARKNESS_," the voice continued, descending to a booming roar.

She leaned towards them, and Elazul recoiled as one of her leaflike protrusions reached for him, gently, almost caressingly. "You only know the half of me," the Goddess practically purred, before the voice shattered into a cackle. "I create, I destroy, and I create again. _I am love_."

Elazul tried to pull Ariesa back, out of harm's way, but she broke free, and strode forward to face the Goddess…

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"No!" Ariesa protested, one hand instinctively reaching towards her spear. "This is not what love is. It is our hope for the future!"

"I _AM_ love," the Goddess roared, and Ariesa cringed in response. "I am _LOVE_. I am _HATE_. I am Mana and life _THEMSELVES. I AM THE FUTURE_." She stretched upwards, unnaturally, as if reaching for the moon itself. "You know so little, yet you still want a future? Are you ready for all the _fear_ it may bring?"

"_Yes_!" Ariesa shouted back. "I've learned. I _know_."

"You _never_ know," the Goddess scolded her. "Darkness. Destruction. _Those_ are things I will bring."

"Is that really what you will do?" Ariesa screamed. "You are trying to take, not give; in darkness, you create nothing!" she cried. "You have made your own shadow, and that is all you see, because you're taking the easy way out." She realized as the words tumbled out, that she was talking about _herself_, everything she had been and done, everything she had been and would be. _Every answer that she had needed to find out for herself._ "You have no balance, no direction. There must be some light in that darkness." She wished terribly that was true, but Escad's words rang in her head. _Things need to die before life can come. _Ariesa regretted that, she hated it… but plenty of her own experiences had taught her that was true.

"Is that what you think?" the Goddess murmured. "Silly girl. Not all of me is _just_. Not all of me is _pure_. That is only half of myself. Those who desire my other half cross their swords." The Goddess _laughed_ then, a chilling, freakish sound that made Ariesa cringe. "Every death is a _gift_ to me," she hissed, and Ariesa remembered the dying soldiers of the Empire, the multitudes that had lost their lives in the pursuit of the Tree, of the mad Goddess that was before her.

She stooped, suddenly seeming weary and aged. "People's freedom is lost, and my truth is buried," she half-whispered. "Why do they not understand that I can provide them with everything? They have called back the Tree, but what do they want from it?"

"Why do you ask me?" Ariesa screeched in frustration. The voice of the Goddess in her dreams, so long ago, echoed in her head, she unable to reconcile the dream's piercing sadness with the sick, rabid creature that stood before her. _"Why won't you do something about it?"_

The Goddess turned her slitted eyes finally, fully, on her, opening them to reveal the depths of the universe flickering within like the stars in the sky… and Ariesa stepped back in fear as the enormity of eternity gazed upon her. "An _Amazon_, you are," she half crooned. "My knights, every one an arm of my own." She stepped towards Ariesa, reaching out a talon almost affectionately. "My warrior child. So much I wish to show you. You have let to truly learn the dark." Ariesa flinched as the Goddess reached leafy and tentacles for her.

A tendril snapped towards her, and Ariesa ducked instinctively, wobbling slightly forward. Whipping back, the tendril knocked her forward onto her knees, she gasping for the breath that had been knocked out of her, wheezing from her servile posture. She lifted her head with difficulty, to see the Goddess staring down on her with a sadistic sort of affection.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Elazul poised to attack, but with ever hint of a movement forward, appendages whipped towards him, keeping him in check as the Goddess's voice became a lyrical siren's song, cooing softly to her.

"I shall show you my darkness," the voice told her. "You must defeat me. You will become a heroine. Open the path _to those who search for me_…" the final part ending in a wail that terrified her. Ariesa's lungs were still heaving, but she whipped her head up in anger.

"I am more than any heroine," she hissed back. "I am a _queen_." Her last syllable rose into a shout, startling the Goddess, and as the deity took a surprised step backwards, she was on her feet in an instant.

Thought was gone; there was nothing left but action. Her blood coursed through her, pounding through her head, traveling up and down her spine, to and from her arms and legs, and she felt as if it was flowing into her spear itself, the weapon out and forward so quick she could not remember it happening.

The Goddess leapt back with unexpected agility. "So, you will come into my darkness," she laughed, and her form seemed to fold in on itself, unwrapping to reveal a beautiful woman, in clothes of white and hair like spun gold. But in her face… the features were lovely, but vacant, incomplete, lacking depth and consciousness. A doll's face; a dead face. Then suddenly, pink lips twisted into an evil smile, and gorgeous eyes narrowed, as the Goddess whipped out a weapon of her own.

Her opponent was like nothing she had ever confronted. Faster than Sierra, faster than even Sandra and her demon-enhanced abilities… the golden sword of the Goddess whistled and whirled in the air, and Ariesa struggled to defend, using the shaft of the spear as one might block with a sword. With every impact, the weapons rang with a clang, the Goddess's divine blade encountering unbreakable rock from the heavens itself, sending a shower of multicolored sparks over the two locked in combat.

Part of her noted distantly a dark orb crossing the moon above, the light dimming as one shape inevitably covered the other. It troubled her, but she pushed that away roughly, forcing herself to give her full attention to the matter at hand.

Ariesa's lungs were heaving, and her muscles crying out as adrenaline coursed through her veins, the only thing that was still keeping her alive as the Goddess pressed her hard. But the Goddess was immortal, and she was only human. Eventually, she would wear down, and then…

She thought that moment had come when she faltered, her defense blocking awkwardly, leaving her open and unprepared for the next assault. She winced as a split second saw the golden sword raised above her…

The downward slice never came, as a wild flash of black swooped from below. _It was Elazul's sword, _appearing from nowhere. Ariesa hurriedly squiggled away to see the Jumi, expression in a twisted sort of calm, cold fury, the strength of his stone arm bracing and blocking the Goddess's sword with his own. _Not just his strength,_ she realized with a start; she couldn't explain _how_ she knew, but there was _Mana _flowing from core to arm and back again, the power of the Goddess herself holding Her back.

That doll's face smirked, and suddenly she _ducked_, sending Elazul stumbling forward. She curled into a ball, white cloak covering herself, then twisted once again to emerge as something not unlike the garish plants that dotted the scene, with a bushel of leaves where a head should have been. The branches of the bush shot out in all directions, whipping in a circle faster than the eye could see, sending Ariesa and Elazul flying away from Her.

Ariesa shook herself off shakily, relieved to see Elazul in the distance, already pulling himself to his feet. Above them, the last light of the moon glimmered out…

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Elazul _felt_ the dark before he could see it. Or perhaps it was not the dark at all. He reached his left hand to his core, the core that was of the element of the Tree, and it cried out to him, fearful of the Moon before it.

_The Goddess needs the moon as much as the sun,_ he realized. _That's why she wanted Blackpearl – no, _Pearl.

Before him, the Goddess's wail could be heard, and her bizarre form fell to its knees, seeming almost to _melt_… into a pale, ghostlike figure. It had the body of a woman, naked alabaster skin over perfect curves, but only the barest suggestion of a face.

The Goddess looked towards the darkened moon, and raised her hands in supplication.

The darkness responded, and from nowhere, everywhere, wild, chaotic energy rained upon them, pinkish- and purplish-black colors flickering to light up the clearing as Mana swirled and rushed crazily around him. _The forces of oblivion_. His core pulsed, _pounded_, fighting to protect its host; but the one with him did not have the same protection, and it was to her he ran.

He didn't remember reaching Ariesa; he couldn't figure out how he had made it in time, her muscles seizing, contorting painfully from the disruptions encasing them both. He threw himself on top of her, his core against her heart, his right arm wrapped around her, pulling her so tightly he feared he might crush her as he turned to see fear in her eyes, only briefly visible in a flash of those crazy, striated lights.

She did not need to be told. With both hands, she grasped his right arm firmly, and _pulled_. Not physically; it was _Mana_ she tugged on, he feeling the violent _wrench_ coursing through him, but gritting his teeth and clinging to her for all it was worth.

A sliver of moonlight appeared, as the dark orb over the moon receded once again. The Goddess turned her head, and the ghostly figure evaporated, leaving only the monstrosity that had greeted them.

There was no thought. Elazul did not need thought. Simple impulse, instinct, bred in years of knighthood, pulled him from Ariesa and had his sword out in a flash, its feeling so natural it was practically an extension of himself.

_The Sword of Fate_, Blackpearl had called it; he pondered it distantly, barely aware of the thoughts forming unbidden. _Fate indeed_, he thought grimly. _Her fate was to betray me. My guardian. _

He swung.

He no longer thought of who he was fighting; he only thought of who he was fighting _for_. Ariesa, cringing in pain from the Mana twisting through her body and soul; through _her_, and it tore his own heart out to see it.

He had no idea if it would work, but as his sword collided with the creature that pretended to be a Goddess of love, of Mana, an otherworldly shriek bellowed from inside her. Elazul swiftly pulled back, slipping automatically into a defensive posture, analytically surveying the damage he had wrought.

He would not have thought it possible, but there it was. Where his sword had sliced into her arm… there was _blood_.

Elazul's eyes remained trained on the enemy before him, but he couldn't help but feel his eyes drawn to Ariesa. The ebbs and flows of the Goddess's attack were fading away, as if vaporizing into the air itself, and Ariesa was once again rising groggily to hands and knees. The Goddess dove suddenly, placing Herself between he and her.

"_Blood_," she uttered, and with a wicked smile, the Goddess leaned down to lick her arm clean, slurping up the blood greedily. "That is what I crave. Destruction, pain, death… these are the forces that shape the world."

_Just let Ariesa have a minute, _Elazul silently prayed, without having the slightest idea of who, indeed, he was praying to. He paced calmly, keeping his eyes on the Goddess, sword poised and ready to strike, while in the back of his head he somehow felt Ariesa gather her strength once again. He _lunged_, not giving the Goddess a chance to recover, every bit of his swordsmanship reaching fruition as he bashed, sliced, struck, jabbed, feinted, and brutalized the Goddess with every movement of his ancient weapon.

He did not need to see Ariesa to know she had risen once again; and there she was, suddenly by his side, her spear poised and raging fury across her face. He stepped back to allow her the opening, and saw her expression turn to reluctant acceptance, then to regret, as she stabbed the blade into the heart of the Goddess.

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Ariesa's hands tensed on her spear, the sound of the Goddess's screams still ringing in her ears. She tugged her weapon back out, the beautiful surface of the Stargazer's blade coming away smeared in blood that looked altogether too human.

She trembled with fear at the enormity of what she had done. _She had just attacked the Goddess._ The immortal being, the one the faith of the world is placed in, and she had just _stabbed_ Her. Her knees felt weak underneath her, her throat ran dry, as the Goddess looked at her with open hatred in her eyes.

Above them, the darkness receded from the face of the moon once again, the giant orb bathing those below in light somehow both cool and warm at the same time. _They say the moon has no light of its own, that it only has empty space by which to reflect the light of the sun, _she thought suddenly, irrationally, wondering why she would even think of such a thing _now_.

Her knuckles whitened, and she felt her spear dig into the scar that sliced across her palm. She remembered how she had gotten that scar: _by doing what she thought was right_. Perhaps it hadn't been, but she had done it, and born her burden.

It gave her courage. Her scars were hers, and hers alone. She had earned them, and no one could ever take them away from her. A smile crossed her face, and she tensed to face her enemy once again.

The Goddess cringed in fear at the nuisance before her, leaves coiling and writing, wrapping around her to protect herself. Before Ariesa's very eyes, she seemed to turn inside out, becoming something not unlike the plants creeping up from the glassy swamp around them, surmounted by a purple bloom. A sweet fragrance drifted over to her, entrancing her, and she took a few tentative steps forward, pulled by… something she knew she wanted.

She heard Elazul's warning shout, but realized it was too late. The flower exploded outwards in a blaze of black, tainted Mana, she thrown backwards from both the force of the blast and the tangled, seething mass that surrounded her, blocking all vision. She waved her arms around, panicked, only to feel and see it fade away after a moment.

_This is not Mana_, she thought to herself. _The Goddess is not one with her Mana; she is using and abusing it, something apart from herself. The same mistake humans have been making for hundreds of years._

The moon above finally broke free of the darkness that it fought, and the Goddess looked up, adoringly, bathed in the full glare of that light, however borrowed it might be. The lines of her figure slimmed again into the ghostly shape she had before, but this was no spirit; light seemed to emanate from within, pulsing lifeforce reaching outwards and up.

But Ariesa did not allow herself to descend into complacency, and she was ready.

It was not the turbulence of chaos that rained down upon her, but a sudden and powerfully intense build that she sensed even before Elazul's shout warned her. Where the last attack had been random and uncontrolled, this was perfect _order_, every piece in place to maximally amplify every shard of Mana, as light brighter than the sun and composed of a thousand colors swirled, circled around her.

With nowhere to run, she held her ground, and shut her eyes.

_Mana_. That spurred a thought. The Sword of Mana still hung at her waist, and eyes still closed, she grasped for it, pushing down that pang of phobia from touching a sword once again. Her fingers grasped around its hilt, and she heard its answer in _sensation_ rather than words, its retort to the Mana that threatened to swallow her whole.

Her eyes snapped open, to see the Goddess staring at her in anger and confusion. "What…" The sentence hung in the air.

Ariesa wasted no time, and dove forward, Sword in hand… and lo and behold, it plunged into the Goddess's side quickly, cleanly, as if it had a will of its own.

The scream she heard was like nothing she had heard yet, a cry of absolute loss and indescribable pain. _"How dare you!"_ the Goddess shrieked.

"How about _you_?" Aries retorted. "I don't want to hurt you! What do you think you are doing? _Wake up_!"

The Goddess snarled almost rabidly. "You think you are hurting me? You are hurting _yourself_," she forced out. "You damage every bit of your heritage, of _who you are_, by using the Sword that way. That is not the way that is holy and sacred. _That is not the way the Sword wishes to be used."_

Ariesa took a step back in surprise, and the Goddess continued. "You do not know, you foolish girl, you have forgotten all the knowledge of your history. _And you will suffer for it_." She raised a hand.

Ariesa tensed for the retaliation, but it was a subtle shift in the Goddess's posture – and a sudden lurch of sensation from Elazul's direction – that alerted her. She lunged once again as a sharp, penetrating spike of Mana shot out, aiming straight for Elazul's core – and the Sword grabbed it, taking that splash of power into itself, traveling into it and through, entering Ariesa herself.

She _screamed_ then as she had never screamed before, her fist still tight around the hilt, the Sword both trying to fight the attack and beholden to it. _It wasn't Mana, _she realized hysterically, _it was a piece of the Goddess herself, the only thing that could destroy a Jumi, a creature of Mana itself . _And the Sword, the power of the old Goddess, had no defense against… itself. The death she was dying was not one of pain, or injury, but something of the very soul itself, a soul that faded before the immensity of the one who had created life…

"_A price must be always be paid," _echoed the Goddess's voice, at once both distant and immediate. "_Death has the powers of life." _A talon reached out… for her, for the Sword, she could not say…

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Elazul saw Ariesa go down, and he felt as if his heart went down with it.

He felt every sharp needle of her pain – in his heart, in his core, the two feeding on each other as he gaped in helplessness as she screamed before him, and he knew it was not only her body that was broken, but her spirit that was dying. "_NO_!" Elazul cried, forgetting the fight completely as he bent over her.

He had little knowledge of healing, but he knew anatomy, and he could see she was badly broken. Bones twisted, blood seeping out… he wanted desperately to pull her to him, to comfort her, to _hold_ her… but feared any movement might push her past the brink of death.

Her eyes were open, but she could not speak, and those eyes caught him. Irrationally, he remembered the first time he had seen those eyes… and thought how much more there was in them than before. Panic gripped him at the idea that this might be the last time their gazes met.

He could practically feel the Goddess behind him, but no longer cared enough to turn. "She is lost, as are so many other pathetic lifeforms before my power," Her voice said, ominous, velvety.

Elazul's right arm reached for Ariesa's heart, but his torso spun to face the… _thing_… behind him. "_YOU_!" he roared. "_You think you are a Goddess? Give her back!"_

"Why don't you, Jumi?" the Goddess taunted. "If she was healed once before..."

Her words stung him. Dammit, he _WAS_ a Jumi. What good was a Knight anyway, if he didn't have what it took when it really came down to it? She was beyond simple physical injury; nothing short of the pure Mana of Jumi tears would do. He knelt over her, the blood gurgling in her throat, willing the tears to come, but knowing they wouldn't. He was a knight, not a guardian.

The look in her eyes was pure terror as she met his gaze, her withering body and soul eating each other alive. He had no idea what to do, but knew he could not give in without a fight. She was the woman he _loved_, and _dammit, he would save her if he could!_

He wanted tears; he did not know where to find them, but in some sort of desperate imitation of what he had seen Florina do, he reached into his core, for _anything_ he might find in there. It almost seemed apologetic, unable to produce the tears he so desperately needed.

Her eyes were heavy-lidded now, and he grasped her left hand with his right, the crystal hand he had hesitated to touch her with for so long. _Why? _ he asked himself now. _What was it I was so afraid of? _He could feel every bit of her fear and pain through it, but more frightening was the quiet acceptance that began to take its place… it meant she was giving up.

_She wasn't a truly a fighter_, he realized. She was a _warrior_, yes, but more than that, she was a hoper, a dreamer. She was the one who wanted the future.. and he didn't want that desire to die here. Desperately, he poured all he could summon through that crystal hand, willing it to _fill_ her somehow… he had once healed her from stone itself, but that was with the aid of all of the Jumi, and here he was stranded, alone. He was ready to give every ounce of life he had, every bit of Mana left in his core, if only she would live, _DAMMIT_!

The Sword of Mana in her hand suddenly flared to life, and Mana exploded from his core with a blinding flash of light, his insides suddenly feeling smashed and twisted, his eyes bulging and his skin on fire.

He felt the shock, the sting, as it traveled down his arm, to his hand, where it caressed just between her heart and throat. She convulsed once, eyes rolling back into her head, then suddenly sat up, gasping for breath, her eyes wide in startlement. He heard his voice cry out, and wrapped his arms around her, feeling her whole once again in his embrace.

His eyes turned to the Goddess… and her vacant, narrow eyes quivered in surprise. "Where…" she stuttered fearfully. "_Where do you know that?"_

"Know what? _Love_?" he challenged arrogantly, feeling Ariesa's lungs fill once again, and strength flow back into her arms, they reaching to wrap around her neck, he solemnly swearing to never let her go again.

"No… _HEALING_…" She replied. "A power for which there is no substitute… The gift of life, a pure giving that does not take... _a truth that has not been seen in a thousand years…_" The Goddess trailed off, her figure seeming to shrink.

"Let me up, Elazul," Ariesa's voice whispered gently. Reluctantly, he let her slip out of his embrace, but slid one arm down to her waist to support her as she shakily pulled herself to her feet.

----------------------------------------

Ariesa succumbed to Elazul's support; truthfully, she needed it. Though every part of her body seemed whole once again, the memory of the pain she had experienced lingered with her still, and she was amazed to find herself still alive.

But alive she was… and so would be the Goddess.

_The Sword was the key to the Goddess_. Now, she understood. It was no weapon; it was not meant to destroy. It was meant to _create_, to link the memory of the ancient Goddess with the one newly born, to teach the connection that had been lost - the connection of life and Mana, the creation of order from disorder - so the new Goddess could begin again, things at once restored to the way they were and created new all over again.

_The Goddess needs her chaos, _Bud had told her. _Then again, didn't they all, in a way? _It was not to be avoided; it was to be understood, embraced, and from that, one became free.

Slowly, awkwardly, she pulled the Sword of Mana from its sheath, her left hand gripping it in a trembling manner, and she pointed it towards the Goddess.

The Goddess only stared at it pointedly, confusion crossing Her grotesque face. "What is this?" she asked, her voice becoming small. "Why do you bring me this sword?" Hey eyes hungered with desire.

"It's not a sword," Ariesa answered calmly, belying the butterflies in her stomach. She turned to Elazul for some sort of reassurance, and his eyes met hers, those lovely, piercing blue eyes. Her eyes never left his, as his right arm slid down hers, to clasp over her hand, the hand that held the Mana Sword.

The Goddess shrank back, seemingly in fear of the object in their hands. "What do you even know about it? What are you going to do with it?"

"What do I do know?" she repeated the question hesitantly, unsure what to do next. "How do I choose?"

Even as she uttered the question, she _understood_, as the Sword of Mana quivered in her grasp. The Sword was not a weapon, had never been; the form was just a way in which humans chose to perceive it. It was a thing of _Mana_, and Mana was not to destroy. _Never to destroy, only to create, making order from disorder, the universe from nothingness_. It told her these things, told her what it _was_, she and Elazul both, speaking to them both in a language they could not comprehend but understood nevertheless.

The understanding… it was part of her heritage. _Mana_ was a part of her ancestry, part of _her_. She, and the Sword, were both here to restore, to make things right once again, and it was _that_ the Goddess needed to know, after all these long years of doing without that simple truth.

Elazul's voice was at her ear, and turning slightly, she caught the faint, mysterious grin he sometimes wore, the one she rarely saw. "_Use your imagination_," he whispered.

She _did_. She let her sense of wonder, of passion, take over, and felt the possibilities lingering at the edge of her thoughts. Mana gurgled there, and she reached for it, only to come away empty-handed, so to speak.

Then suddenly, the warmth of Elazul's hand, the memory of his touch, the sense of their love for one another, made her realize, and she reached once again, but not her own… through Elazul instead.

She nearly lost her grip on him, and the Sword, as what she _reached_ for flowed like a river breaking through a dam, torrential and wonderful all at once. She _gasped_, wanting to reach for more, and the harder she pulled, the more it responded.

Mana filled her, and suddenly she felt more alive than she ever had before, suffused with the power, and Elazul as well. She sensed _pain_ on his end, his expression was contorted, and she realized he was the one receiving the full force of those flows, channeling them, ordering them before they reached her unprepared self. The full onslaught was something she could never have survived; it was only the power of Elazul's core that let her handle something she was never meant to handle.

Even so, she was filled to the brim, every fiber of her body tingling with the heightened sensation, and she knew it was _time_.

She pulled her arm upward, extending it, Elazul still clinging to her as she led him. The Sword pointed forward, but she held it there, bracing for what came next. She gave over her will, her choice, surrendering to Mana, letting it wash through her and into the Sword, it absorbing with a rush, and glowing as bright as the sun… Ariesa knowing she should look away before it blinded her, but unable to tear away, and even more than the sight was the overwhelming, delirious feeling, leaving her body somewhere far behind.

The Goddess shrieked, and recoiled, but Ariesa would not pull the Mana back, as she spoke one single word.

"_Remember_."

It was what the Goddess had asked of her in those dreams so long ago, and she had answered the call, to come full circle and cry it out once again. It had been the Goddess calling her in her dreams so long ago, and she had answered the call, it taking her endlessly far from where she had been.

The Goddess _screamed_, wailing in fear, and from nowhere, leaves wrapped around her, encasing the monstrous figure, recreating her cocoon once again as if she wished to hide from the truth. But before Ariesa's very eyes, the ropey skeins stretched, shuddered, colors traveling the surface wildly and without direction, finally settling into a pearlescent light that was not truly white, but seemed to have every color of the rainbow emanating from within.

The leaves slowly uncurled to reveal a beautiful, glowing figure of light, womanly but somehow no one particular woman, all and one encased in that amorphous, heavenly creature.

"_You_," the voice of the Goddess spoke, now lyrical, musical, haunting and calming all at once. "For the two of you… together… to do what you have done… these powers have not been seen in a thousand years." She turned to Elazul, and one glowing hand drifted, stretched, to touch his core, and Ariesa felt the same as he did, a flood of pure Mana, ecstasy washing over them both. "This…" she said. "That piece of Stone… eternally part of Mana. Part of _me_."

"What, then, does the core mean now?" Elazul asked hesitantly.

"Simple," the Goddess said with a smile. "You will have all the Mana you need, you and all your kind. Others will find their way through my powers as well, but you and your kind alone will know that you have endured, and suffered, to reemerge once again."

She smiled, and turned to Ariesa. "Mana, by itself, has power, yes, but there is more to it than that. With you beside him… the two of you will be something never seen before, your power, your love, together making you nearly immortal, nearly divine."

"But I know no magic," Ariesa protested.

"You do not need to. You have the heritage of the Amazons within you. You are a part of me, a part of _life,_" the Goddess told her, her voice rising to a powerful crescendo. "_A thousand years ago, the Mana Tree burnt to ashes_. The barest traces remained, in artifacts holding her memory, and among those who belonged to her – the fairies, the dragons, the Jumi who took Her Stones into themselves.

"Desperate beings clung to these last vestiges, fighting among themselves for control, forgetting what Mana itself really meant… and in these conflicts Mana was used, abused, finally seeming to fade away and leave an empty shell of a world behind. After that… mankind grew afraid to desire. Their hearts filled with empty emotions, and grew estranged from my hands. Their eyes turned away from my infinite power, and were troubled by their petty disputes.

"Finally, as the world and Mana itself were torn to pieces, there was little left to find, and those who sought it grew scarce. The world returned to peace, and Mana, and I, began to heal on our own."

"But it was not enough. The damage had been done, and no one knew any longer to remember me, to need me, to let me provide them with everything… to find me, to walk beside me. But now…" She swung her eyes from one to the other. "I beseech you to right the balance, finish the circle, bring things back to what they once were. Disrupt the forces that oppose me, and return life to my world. _Let people become free._"

The Goddess's face carried an expression of immortal, eternal pain. "How much the world has forgotten about the preciousness of life… The secret of Mana becomes lost, when Mana itself becomes only a legend." The Goddess reached out a hand to Ariesa, and as the touch met, there was no true pressure against her skin, just an overwhelming sense of something _there_. She couldn't help but gaze up in wonder.

"Go, now," the Goddess told them. "Go with my blessings, and discover the world that is being born once again."

----------------------------------------

They returned to the Sanctuary to find Pearl, crumpled with that same look of utmost sadness they had seen on Blackpearl… right before they had entered the dimension of the Goddess.

Elazul ran to her, but she cried "_No_!" almost painfully, and shoved him away with all the strength her tiny body could muster. He stumbled backwards, more in shock than from the forcefulness of the blow, and he felt hurt cross his face.

That left Ariesa to comfort the girl, striding over to her to gather her in her arms, Pearl suddenly seeming as fragile as glass. The Jumi clung to her as tightly, burying her head in Ariesa's shoulder, shaking with silent, tearless sobs. Ariesa whispered words of quiet comfort, and let the pain slowly subside.

"I remember _everything_," she finally said. "Everything I knew... everything Blackpearl knew... everything Blackpearl _forgot_. Both of us. Both of _me_."

"But that's great!" Ariesa attempted her best chirpy voice. Elazul just remained silent.

"No... I remember…" She shuddered. "I remember I betrayed you. I remember why. I remember the choice needed to be made, and I remember I _hated making it!_" she wailed. "All those years of choices, trying to find the best when there was no true good, and suffering the consequences every single time… and the worst of it, Elazul, is the choices I had to make for _you_, the loss I had to take for you to survive."

Elazul knelt forward, puzzled concern on his face, and Ariesa let Pearl go. "Pearl…" he began awkwardly. "I am not angry with you. How could I be? The bond between knight and guardian is forever."

"But that's just _it_!" Pearl cried. "You don't see it, do you, Elazul? You've never been on _this_ side. But I've been on both, and I know. You _bonded _her, Elazul, whether you know it or not." She sniffled. "I gave my knight away. I did it because I love you. Not in the simple way that some call romance, but something more than that, a connection that crosses through Mana, surpassing time and space itself." She stood resolutely. "I gave up _memories_ for you, so long ago, for someone who would let me _imagine_ instead, leaving hundreds of years of my old self and its shadows behind to let you inspire me and guide me. And since then, every step I took has been for you… but I cannot let you lead me any longer."

Elazul's head was positively swimming; Ariesa only looked puzzled as he spoke. "But a knight can only have one guardian - "

"Not _that_!" Pearl practically screamed. "_YOU_ are the guardian, Elazul! And she is your _knight_! And it is more than you and I ever had, because you _love_ each other!" She leaned forward, shame, guilt, and pain covering her expression before she hid her face in her hands.

Elazul rocked back on his heels to sit on the stone floor of the sanctuary of Mana, staring at the ancient plants around him, as if they could help him work it all through. "It's my fault," Pearl whimpered. "I couldn't do anything when Alexandra hurt you, I couldn't do anything as a guardian with no tears, but I had to do _something_. And that something meant I couldn't stay bonded to you. I _snapped_ the bond, Elazul," she said, raising her eyes awkwardly. "I _broke_ it, after all you have done for me, and I cut you loose, I _abandoned_ you, but there was no other way…"

"So that's what happened…" Elazul said carefully. "I thought I couldn't sense you as well because my core was injured, or because you switched…" He rambled on, not sure of half the things she was saying.

"It was the residue of the old bond," Pearl explained from inside her sleeve. "It never dies completely. It was enough to let you believe our bond was still there."

"But how…" He looked at Ariesa in puzzlement. "She's not even Jumi…"

Pearl raised her head, and though it was the sound of her voice, Elazul could hear Blackpearl and her years of knowledge within. "It's in your _core_, Elazul, and then some," she told him. "If you didn't have _this_," she continued, her hand brushing his crystallized arm, "you wouldn't have the strength to bond a non-Jumi. And you _need_ a bond, Elazul. That's who you _are_. As soon as I broke the bond between us… conscious or not, you reached for another."

"But why… am I a… _guardian_?" Elazul found that incredibly awkward to say.

"Because _she_ can't be one. The guardian has the power of Mana," Pearl said firmly. "And more than that… you needed her to save you…" Pearl paused, and swallowed. "I felt it the whole time. You've been drawing off her strength. You've needed her to _live_."

Elazul reached a hand to his now-intact core… and it told him it was _true_. The further away from Ariesa he had gotten, the more he had hurt. He turned to the other woman, she patiently waiting, and he opened his core as he had before in front of the Goddess… and sure enough, there it was, the familiar bond of knight and guardian, only… turned around. Still, the essence of it was there, of connection, of understanding, of _love_. He grinned at her, and not only did she smile back, but he _felt_ her this time, knowing the things she felt for him as easily as he knew what he felt for her.

_This might not be bad_. He had run from her, thinking he could escape; but now he understood. It had already been too late.

Deep down, he knew it was what he wanted… but that didn't mean no one was hurt. He had wished there was a way it did not have to be so, but was that really ever possible? Tough choices had to be made, the same way Pearl had been making them all these years. He felt a sudden outpouring of sympathy and understanding, and turned to his former guardian, she now looking terribly hurt and alone.

"I want to cry," Pearl whimpered unhappily.

She turned to Elazul. "Come here," she uttered, voice more pleading than demanding. He leaned towards her, and she grabbed his right arm, the crystallized arm.

"No," he attempted to protest.

"It's all right," she whispered, and for a moment he saw the Pearl he had known from the start, the Pearl who had been his guardian. "You don't need it any more."

Her eyes were already welling, he saw, and instead of slender rivulets, the crystal tears built into one single, bloated droplet, it finally swelling and dripping from her to him.

He winced as it fell. It did not hurt physically; it was something more he was both gaining and losing as the stone of his arm reverted to pale flesh, instantly at the spot where Pearl's tear met, and slowly creeping outward from there. Another splashed his upper arm, acting the same way. Another, and _another_, and _another_, patches of flesh knitting together, coming back to life and bringing sensations he barely remembered. And when she finally released him, he tested his arm, purely human flesh again, flexing the forearm and making a fist.

It lacked some of the strength of the stone arm, but it felt good nonetheless. He was okay with it.

Pearl merely looked at him with her familiar confused expression. He leaned forward affectionately, and leaned towards her ear. She laid one hand on the arm she had just brought back to life.

"You're a wonderful guardian. You've completed your duty splendidly," he told her gently. "And I will always be Pearl's knight, whenever you need me." The expression on her face switched from doubting to grateful, and he embraced her warmly, closing his eyes to place one gentle, platonic kiss on her forehead. She was more his sister than any blood would ever give.

But blood was only the beginning; it always gave way to new attachments, and he followed her eyes to a slender, tall golden-haired girl waiting patiently off to the side. "_Shayla_," he whispered to the small, pale girl in his arms, and reluctantly let her go.

He stood, and Ariesa lifted herself to her feet as well, patiently, as dignified as any Jumi knight he had ever seen, in her own way as dignified as Blackpearl. She might be his knight, but he was still a couple of inches taller… and as he reached out to wrap his arms around her softly, she did not shy away.

"What now? I don't know anything about being a knight," she said, giggling nervously.

"You know more than you could imagine." He grabbed her hand with his own, now flesh once again, and lifted her palm gently to his core. It hummed in familiarity, recognizing its knight, she gasping in surprise as the touch connected.

"There's more..." She gulped. "There's much more than there was before."

"There is," he murmured. "Much more." He leaned towards her face, still maintaining the bond with his core, now resonating with such perfection that he could draw on her as easily as she could draw on him. It said everything… but the words itself.

He didn't want to leave those words unsaid any longer, and leaned in as close as he possibly could, his eyes locking hers. "I love you," he whispered.

Tears welled in her eyes, she struggling to contain them. "It's safe now," he told her reassuringly. "Mana has returned. The Jumi are safe, and the curse is gone."

She nodded, and finally, the release came, the tears running down her cheeks as she turned to bury her head on his shoulder. "I love you, too," she replied quietly; and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Pearl's face break out in a small smile, before he tuned her out completely.


	59. Secret of Mana

**59. Secret of Mana**

Lise fingered the spear Hawk had given her. It was a beautiful thing, made of delicate rock and silver, but it was no ceremonial piece. Her experienced eye told her it was a thing of power; her senses told her it was perhaps something more, possibly even like the artifacts Valda had found.

It might or might not have some residue of Mana left inside it. She couldn't tell one way or the other; but in either case, it did not change the value for her.

"It has a name," Hawk told her. "Stargazer. For a star lancer, a warrior of the universe." He grinned widely.

She fingered the blade, careful not to nick herself on the sharp edge. The power of death, wrapped in life; it all depended how you chose to use it. "It's a wonderful anniversary present."

"Fifty years," Hawk told her. "And you're as sexy as ever."

She yelped and dropped her present as he grabbed her and pulled her into his arms, the two falling back on their bed. He kissed her rather thoroughly before loosening his hold, though not letting her go completely.

"Fifty years," she sighed. "Three children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren…."

"Aliota. Jelissa. Alluma." Hawk rattled off the names of their children, then the first of the grandchildren. "Alyssa. Aminda. Andraia. Ahna. You know that's the new fashion, now? Names that start and end with A. It's all over the rest of the country."

"I guess that's going to be the names of all our grandchildren now," teased Lise. "All we need is an Angela in the family tree."

"Good Goddess, like the first one wasn't enough to handle." Hawk replied.

"It would be so confusing for the historians, since Carlie already named a daughter Angela," Lise observed.

"Doesn't really matter. The historians will probably screw it all up anyway."

Lise let herself laugh, snuggling closer to her husband, the man she loved and trusted more than she had ever realized she could. Long moments drew past with no sound but each other's breaths, he gently stroking her hair.

"Any regrets?" he whispered to her. "After all this time?"

"None," she immediately affirmed, and he pulled her tighter.

She tilted her head slightly, and out the window, she could see the sun beginning to set. "Look," she told him, and he sat up, twisting to hold her still.

She sighed, breathing him in for that long, precious moment. _This is what life is all about,_ she thought to herself, _these little moments that have magic all their own. That is the secret of Mana._


	60. Legend of Mana

**60. Legend of Mana**

Elazul lay back on Ariesa's padded bench, the sun's rays reaching through the window to warm his skin; but that was not the most pleasant feeling in his head. He barely noticed as he focused on the woman in the room, relishing the simple act of just _looking_ at her.

She had always been pretty, yes; he had noticed that the first day he saw her. But so were a million other girls in this world, and he hadn't thought twice about those, either. Now… to his eyes, she was beautiful, stunning, absolutely perfect - and he couldn't take his eyes off of her.

_Terra_, the memory surfaced suddenly, randomly. That had been so many years ago – she was probably long gone by now. But the remembrance of those feelings lived on, feelings he had discovered at the start of his journey, he someone so young, angry, and naïve. He realized now that feelings like those never really died; part of them always remained with you.

But it was Ariesa who had the keys to his heart.

It wasn't truly the way she looked; that was the same as always. It was what radiated from _inside_ – wisdom, strength, love, a hundred things that had not shone from him when he first met her, but were now almost blinding to his eyes. She was his knight; he could draw on her strength, yes, but it was not her physical might that was her power. It was her inner character that was the more precious by far.

The once place the difference truly showed was in her eyes. She looked – not exactly older, but maybe – _ageless_? was the word. Experienced, confident, dignified. You saw that sometimes, in Jumi, Blackpearl most of all.

Speaking of… Blackpearl claimed Ariesa was a queen by right, and he couldn't help but think she was starting to look the part.

Then again, based on what Vadise had told him, he supposed he was a king himself, or at least a prince. Something like that. None of that mattered, next to the other.

He was… _a sorcerer_. It was both in his blood, and his core, that piece of Dryad's stone only making it easier to do what he was born to do anyway. Not a sorcerer like Anise, not like Anuella or any of the mages of the wars, not like the students and teachers of Geo, nor even, truly like a Jumi guardian. He was a pure wizard, pulling straight from Mana and the Goddess herself, something that had not been seen since Angela, a thousand years before.

He smiled wryly. He probably wouldn't have a chance to thank his ancestor, but somehow, he felt like she knew. Whatever plane of existence she was on now.

_Was it for that that the Jumi had been created?_ They had been _made_, in a sense, by the old Goddess, and it had been said through the years the role of the Jumi was to preserve her memory for the new Goddess… and now that day had come. _Are we a legend of Mana, or a secret?_

Perhaps it did not matter. It was a new era, and just like everyone else, they would have to learn to become something new.

There wasn't anyone to teach him, really, but Elazul had been able to figure out a few things on his own. Oddly, Bud and Lisa had the best heads for it of anyone he found; perhaps it was because they were so young, and unconstrained by shopworn ideas. Bud, in particular, seemed to charge ahead with unorthodox theories that managed to be absolutely, utterly _right,_ Elazul wondered what kind of future lay ahead for the young man.

The very first thing he had figured out was how to tie Ariesa's life to his core, weaving it through their knight-guardian bond, the same bond that let her touch Mana through him. Others in the past had learned to extend their life using tainted Mana; but this was something clean and pure. Maybe it was her elven blood that had made it easier, but in any case… she would live as long as his core flowed with Mana, and age no more than he himself did. Which, based on observation, meant not at all. He would have her for as long as he lived.

He found he rather enjoyed that thought.

He was Jumi… but he didn't heal with tears. He didn't need to cry. He found _anger_ instead, anger at the suffering of those he loved, that pulled powers from deep within him. Perhaps it was all the same, when you came down to it; emotion of any sort formed the gateway, and it was the person themselves who carved their path from there.

_Emotions_. They were all part of life, of Mana - the Mana that had once been nothing but a legend, but was now real once again. But despite all that had happened over that single force, all the centuries of people craving it, pursuing it… in a sense, the essence was there all along.

_Love. _He reached for his core, touching gently on the bond, and catching her swivel her head slightly in response. _Love is two souls being together…_

And they always would be. They might create a future great or small, but they would be doing it together.

----------------------------------------

Daena turned as the door opened behind her, unsurprised at who she saw.

Of course, it was Escad. No one else in the Temple of Healing would enter the Dreamweaving Room without knocking first. But as the Holy Knight of the Temple, she allowed him a certain… discretion.

_Especially_, she thought with a splash of guilt, since she really should have invited him for this in the first place.

"You were talking to Matilda," he said accusingly.

"Well, Selva for a bit, but then, Matilda, yes," she admitted.

Escad slumped slightly. Daena couldn't help but feel bad for him; it was a wound that would never heal for him. Nor for her, really, but it wasn't that they were without her completely.

She turned to the torches, still burning with their eternal light. _Why are these here? _she asked herself. _Do they symbolize balance, continuity, rebirth – or all of the above? _Perhaps it didn't matter; Gato was the home of the new Goddess, and She was all those things, and more.

"You should go see her," she suggested, not turning. "Go see Olbohn in the Underworld. He'll be able to find her for you the fastest."

"I shouldn't leave you," Escad said morosely. "You're my responsibility now."

"Goddess! Just _go_, already!" she swore, whirling around, and Escad straightened looking absolutely _scandalized_. Sheepishly, she laughed. "I'm a horrible choice for a High Priestess, aren't I? Matilda sure screwed things up leaving without an heir. I don't know why they chose me. I swear, every bit of magic I can find is on loan from fairies or something." The first spells she had been playing with – healing spells, mostly, and a little bit of fire and wind – came out awkwardly, with difficulty, but nevertheless, they were _there_.

Escad took a few steps forward. "Because she would have wanted it." His voice grew quiet. "It would have been nice had she had a… _child_ - " Daena noticed he stumbled over that word – "but as it is, you are her sister, even if not by blood. That makes you her heir." He plucked a fold of her white robe. "The robe suits you."

She looked down at it. "It feels constricting."

"Most things do, at first." Awkward silence settled, compelling him to change the subject. "So, what were you talking about?"

"About her. About me." Daena waved a hand generally in the air. "Mostly… she wanted to tell me the mistakes she thought she made, trying to let everything work out. She told me she realizes now that sometimes that works, but you have to keep the balance."

"I think you're going to be a very different abbess," Escad observed.

"I think you're right." She looked at the uncomfortable stone bier Matilda had slept on with distaste. "I think I'm going to start with some redecorating."

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It was easy enough to get back in the Underworld once you had been baptized, and Escad was grateful for that. It saved him the troubled of tracking someone down who could let him in.

Shadoles shrieked gleefully behind him, but he hardly cared. He was pretty much stuck with them in any case – they were part of Mana as well. _One of the more annoying parts_. He was gradually able to tune them out as he wound down the corridors of the Underworld, as familiar as the streets of Gato to him, finally finding himself at the door of Olbohn's room once again.

Olbohn barely blinked an eye – any of them – as his former apprentice barged in without a knock. "Escad," he greeted the other man cordially. "Have you come for that duel at last?"

Escad reached back for his broadsword instinctively, his hand almost quivering with the desire to pull it out, to prove himself to his former master. Memories sprang up of Olbohn half-mocking him with his lack of preparedness, and he cringed in humiliation; but a new part of himself stopped his arm before his fingertips touched the sword's handle, and slowly, he let his hand drop.

"No," he finally said. "The sword is not the only way to be a hero."

"Oh?" A couple of eyes raised. "You have learned a few things."

"I should have listened to you more," Escad said slowly, forcing out the grudging admission.

Olbohn stood, and an arm appeared out of nowhere to neatly grasp Escad's sword and pull it out of its sheath with one smooth, expert motion. Escad gasped angry, but balled his hands into fists and waited patiently, as Olbohn looked almost affectionately at the polished silver blade.

"You understand now," Olbohn finally said. "You are worthy of the Soulblade." He smiled slightly. "An ancient weapon, forged in Rolante, and offered by the king of Forcena to the Holy Knight, Olbohn Liotte."

Escad's jaw dropped at that. "_You_…"

"So surprised?" Several of Olbohn's eyes blinked. "You know your family line began in Forcena, don't you? Back in the days when their knights were true defenders of the Goddess." He looked at Escad pointedly. "And now it all comes full circle again. But then again, you hardly came down here to see me, so why should this change anything?"

"I didn't," Escad admitted. "I came to see Matilda."

"She's talking to Pokiehl right now," Olbohn replied. "I'll take you to her, but you probably shouldn't interrupt."

Olbohn led him deeper through the corridors of the Underworld, and his heart jumped when they finally found her. She spoke a few more words to the other Wisdom, then turned at his approach with a smile, and he nearly gasped in surprise.

She looked every bit the way he remembered her… _when_.

Olbohn had quietly disappeared to wherever it was Wisdoms went, leaving the two of them alone in the silent, warm cave that was the Underworld. And suddenly Escad realized he had no idea what to say.

Matilda gazed at him with those deep hazel eyes, concern on her doll-like face. "You've changed," she observed gently.

"I've learned a few things," Escad said carefully; but the look on Matilda's face told him she already knew it all.

She sighed, hanging her head, and wandered a few steps away. "The only way to deal with our mistakes is to learn from them," she said. "You still have a chance to make something out of what you have learned. I walk another path, now. There is much still to be done; for my sake, please, continue to bring the Goddess back to all our lives."

She raised her head, and took a deep breath, meeting his eyes with effort. "I made my mistakes," she murmured, her eyes seeming to reach now deep into his soul, showing every bit of her new wisdom. "And one of them was _you_."

Escad paused, unsure of what to say, and she continued. "I never said this. Perhaps it wasn't the right time, we were both so far from the people we needed to be. I thought it was…. _Irwin_…" Escad noted that she paused, almost afraid to say the name to him. "But it should have been you, Escad. If only I had known who I was… it would have been _you_."

He gasped in surprise, one hand reaching for her but scared to touch, scared he would find nothing but empty air. Matilda looked at him in sorrow. "And now, it's too late," she said mournfully. "But I may be able to manage just a moment…"

Escad knew what it was; he no longer tried to pretend he couldn't feel it. _Mana_. She reached her hand for his, and he flinched as warm, living skin touched his own.

"Matilda…" he said, leaving the rest unspoken.

"Hush," she chastised. "It will not last long."

She leaned inwards and up, and her lips met his, and he lost himself in a delirious moment of pleasure, before she began to fade away, and his arms slid off nothingness. Her image faded, and she spoke one sentence, the words hanging in the air, more real than anything about her in this moment.

"_I love you... and I want you to be free."_

She turned, and left it at that, Escad feeling his heart fall once again as she disappeared. He might have a chance to see her again, sometime… but there would never be anything more than what she had just given.

A Shadole appeared out of nowhere beside him. "Going back up?" it chirped.

"Yeah," Escad told it. "Get me out of here."

"Okkaaaayyyyy!" it sang, and Escad wondered briefly if he should trust it, but he felt a whoosh of motion, and suddenly found himself at the entrance to the Underworld, ready to emerge into life once again.

He took one troubled step forward, and reality _shifted_ around him, he wobbling slightly to find himself in a familiar graveyard. He turned, touching the gravestone hesitantly, but it was nothing but old, cold stone. He shrugged, and turned to leave.

Trudging away from the portal to the underworld, a flicker of movement caught his eye, and he turned to see a fairy, gazing at him with curiosity and wonder.

----------------------------------------

Having all of her sisters together again was cause enough for celebration, but there was an extra reason for Esmeralda to be joyful. They had made the long trek from Etansel to Geo specifically for her graduation.

"Now what will you do?" asked Margad.

"Return to Etansel," she said, not interrupting her packing. Boxes littered her room at the magic academy, years of study being finally moved out. "Blackpearl told me that I'm ready to be knighted."

"And then?" pressed Kata.

Esmeralda stood, and straightened. "I was thinking…" She hadn't told anyone else this yet. "Maybe return home?" By _home_, she did not mean Etansel; but her sisters saw that right away.

Beryl gasped. "You'd go back to the Empire?"

"Sure, why not?" she told them. "Jumi should be where it matters. Wasn't that what we said, when we started this together?" She touched her core to demonstrate. "Besides, Elazul said he and Ariesa are planning to go there, and I can probably learn more from Elazul than anyone in Geo right now."

"Only Elazul? Not Pearl?" asked Margad.

Esmeralda paused. That part did feel a little… sad… to her, but she supposed it was one of those things that was inevitable. "No," she told them. "No, I don't think Pearl will be there."

That reminded her of something. "Check out the gifts Ariesa and Elazul sent me!" she said gleefully, foraging through the mess to find the presents and cards that had arrived only days before.

Kata snatched a card near the top. " 'Dear Esmeralda: Congratulations on finishing the Academy! Hope to see you real soon. Love, Bud.' " She looked up in amusement. "Looks like you've got an admirer."

"_Eeeewww_!" Esmeralda squealed. "He's like, fifteen!"

"You're Jumi. Eventually he'll look older than you," Beryl pointed out reasonably.

Esmeralda was positively mortified by the direction the conversation was taking, and silently thanked Goddesses old and new when a knock on the door saved her. All four sisters looked towards it, surprised. "Come in?" called Esmeralda.

The door opened, and in strolled Kathinja. "Young lady," she said to Esmeralda, "would you come with me, please?"

"Is something wrong?" gulped Esmeralda.

"No, no," laughed Kathinja. "Am I that scary? No, Nunuzac just asked me to come find you."

The four girls stood up. "No, I'm sorry, just Esmeralda, please," Kathinja told them gently said, and the others sat down glumly.

"I'll be back soon!" Esmeralda called behind her as she followed Kathinja down the familiar winding path to the library. Kathinja opened the door and gestured for her to enter; but as the door closed with a click behind her, Esmeralda realized with surprise that the teacher was not following.

It left her alone in the library. Well, almost alone. There was Nunuzac, as always… and Pokiehl.

"Wisdom," she greeted him awkwardly, not sure what the title would be.

"Jumi," Pokiehl responded, half-amused. "Be at ease. It is Nunuzac you are here to see. I am merely attending to some business."

Esmeralda turned to her old mentor, patiently waiting. The plate of glass shimmered hazily for a moment before a voice emerged from within. "I wanted to say goodbye," Nunuzac told her gently.

"Goodbye? I'm not leaving for another week!" Esmeralda laughed. "There's graduation parties to go to, and I haven't got half my stuff packed…"

"No," Nunuzac interrupted. "I am the one who is leaving."

Esmeralda started. "How? Where?"

"He is to become Wisdom of the Moon," Pokiehl said. "He has accepted both the risk and the necessity of the Goddess, and for this, she chooses to cancel his debt." Pokiehl strummed his lute, a few cheerful chords. "We must be complete, to provide wisdom to the future, the wisdom that the Goddess wishes us to know."

Esmeralda gulped. She had thought she was the one moving on, but it seemed she wasn't the only one - and somehow that bothered her, things changing around her before she had a chance to think about them.

But Mana waited for no one, and she felt its sort of vibrating hum in her core as before her, Nunuzac _changed_… into an ordinary, middle aged man.

He had black hair slightly dotted with gray, and a nondescript face that Esmeralda couldn't help but stare at nevertheless. She was overcome with emotion.

"Thank you.. for everything," was all she managed to squeak out, and impulsively hugged her teacher goodbye. His human form returned the embrace… and then was gone once again, leaving Esmeralda somehow lost and determined all at the same time.

----------------------------------------

Vadise watched Sierra and Larc sparring, the sheer energy they must have had as children infecting them. Larc would be leaving soon enough for his new role as Tiamat's dragoon; but in the meantime, it gave her satisfaction to watch her own beloved dragoon enjoy herself.

Her two enormous blue eyeballs blinked, she having become so used to only having the one, that the second seemed almost… extraneous.

That was one of many things that had returned with all of Mana. Argot was lost to them forever; he had known the risk he took, and she had no choice but to accept that. But Akravator, Jajara… Drakonis had not had the power to cut them off from Mana so completely, and they had returned, not just to life but to freedom. The Stones needed them no more.

Beside her sat Bud, cheering the two dragoons on with all the enthusiasm of youth. She rather enjoyed his company. He was a quick learner; he picked right up on concepts that had been dead for a thousand years. Maybe humans no longer remembered their ancient wisdom, but… if the could imagine it, they could learn it once again.

"Enjoy yourself, Bud," Vadise told him. "I'm going to go take a peek at the Mana Stone." Bud nodded, never tearing his eyes from the sparring match.

She ambled gracefully into the small glade where the Stone calmly waited, now fully grown and calmly emanating the pearlescent light that had all the elements mixed in. She rested her head on her forelegs, letting the swirling surface entrance her.

A movement caught her eye, and she turned her head to glimpse a small figure. At first she thought it might have been a fairy, before realizing the sensation of its Mana was… something else altogether.

She drew a breath, wondering… _could it be?_

It emerged hesitantly from the bushes, revealing itself to be a small, feminine creature, body a nut-brown and wild green hair nearly resembling leaves. She flitted forward, and tapped on the stone inquisitively.

Vadise finally cleared her throat to announce her presence.

The figure turned. "Oh, hi…" she greeted, a little scattered. "I was just checking on my stone, if everything is returning to what it should be."

"_Your_ stone?" asked Vadise.

"Yes," said the being. "I am the Elemental Spirit of Wood, Dryad."

Vadise bowed her neck deeply, respectfully, in awe of the creature she had not seen in so long. "The Elemental Spirits are returning," she intoned in wonder. "The Goddess is indeed with us at last."

"Yeah…" Dryad said shyly. "We kind of are. Pleased to meet you, creature of the Goddess."

Vadise rose to her feet once again. "In that case," she began conversationally, "might I introduce you to someone named Bud?"

----------------------------------------

Domina was changing.

Thoma could see it, even in the little time he had been there. It was still a sleepy little town, to be sure; but there was something, an air of anticipation, that was different from before.

Deciding to return with Ariesa had been easy. There really wasn't anyplace else for him to go… and one very good thing for him to stay for.

He had taken over the mercenary business Ariesa was leaving behind. _As long as we have Mana, we will have monsters,_ he thought to himself. And he had his own little house, the one the villagers _still_ referred to as Elazul and Pearl's house. "Hey, Thoma, how's Elazul's house treating you?" was a pretty standard greeting.

He had been trained harshly and rapidly in the Empire, and only now was beginning to realize how young he really was. It gave him a sense of wonder, like he was experiencing life all over again, and he wasn't eager to give up the things he had found.

Speaking of… Lisa stretched out comfortably on his couch. "Really, you're thinking of going back to school? In _Geo_?" he asked her, with mixed feelings. On one hand, he wanted the best for her… on the other, he didn't want to see her go.

Lisa sat bolt upright. "Maybe. But it wouldn't be for long, you know?" He nodded reluctantly. "I mean, I'm probably ahead of my class by now, so I could graduate ahead of time… and you could come visit me on school holidays…"

"And after?" Thoma pressed.

"After?" she repeated. "After, we really don't know. Maybe we just have to kind of feel it out." She looked rather intently into his eyes.

He didn't want to talk about it anymore, and instead found himself kissing her gently, sweetly. _Really, she's right, _he told himself, wrapping his arms around her. _We are young still. We have all the time in the world._

----------------------------------------

Pearl leaned back in a fairly ordinary chair, while Florina remained in her rightful place, lounging on the throne of the Clarius. There was little conversation that needed to be said outright between the two who shared a bond few humans had ever had the luxury of experiencing. It was a simple reunion of friends, meant for regaining lost memory, reinspiring imagination… not only for the two of them, but for the sake of all the Jumi.

She could remember it _all_, now. The things she had forgotten, the things she had nearly remembered, even some things she hadn't realized she knew. Everything that was Blackpearl's… everything that was _hers_. Both were part of herself; she understood that now… and she recognized herself, when she looked in the mirror.

This form… it was not an accident. It was her _own_ self, at an age not far from the age Florina appeared now. Perhaps, indeed, it was Florina's example that had led her to choose her most innocent adult form, in unconscious imitation of the radiant purity of the Clarius she had guarded.

It did make sense. And anyway, if Jumi could maintain their age indefinitely, why could they not also _change_ it?

Oddly enough, few Jumi seemed troubled by the fact that she could switch at will. Jumi could adjust to _anything_, she supposed. The younger Jumi did seem to take things in stride far more easily than the Lucidia; but the older ones were coming around. And as for Sappho… well, he'd just have to figure out a way to deal with it.

But at this moment, being Pearl seemed the right thing to do. As did taking over as Clarius.

The Jumi were not what they had been; as the rest of the world, they were entering an uncertain future, and she was finally ready to accept her responsibility and lead them. Sorcerers, they were, every one, no longer merely a passive conduit for Mana, but taking an active role, Mana feeding back and forth between they and the Goddess, their power multiplying with every circuit. Though she expected neither magic, nor the ancient bond between knights and guardians, to be limited to Jumi any longer, that did not change the fact that the Jumi would be the ones to pave the path.

"Knights and guardians will not be what they have been. Now, a knight can heal, and a guardian can fight," she observed aloud. "But we still divide into knights and guardians, perpetuating the ancient paradigms of balance between opposites making both stronger than the sum of the parts. So, what will you do for a knight?" she asked Florina.

Florina sighed. "It's a shame Alexandra could not be with us now," she said. Pearl merely scrunched up her face lightly; Florina would always see the best in a person. "But maybe someone else. Esmeralda?"

Pearl nodded thoughtfully. "What about you?" asked Florina.

Pearl did not reply for a moment, only reached one hand to her core. She could feel Elazul still, somewhere to the east, probably still in Domina, though she knew he would be closer soon enough. She knew she could call him whenever she wanted.

That bond would never break; nor did she think either Elazul or Ariesa would want it to. But she did not need it with the same urgency she once had; she knew she could reach into herself just as easily.

_She could remember her mother now_. And somehow, after all this time, she had become what Carlie had wanted her to be, nine hundred sixty-nine years leading her to become who she was now.

"Maybe I don't need one," she replied. She was the lost moon no longer. She was _home_.

----------------------------------------

Ariesa tugged at her clothes for the thousandth time, adjusting the image in the stand-mirror before her. The elegant robes were something she had never worn before, something she never dreamed of wearing.

"You look beautiful," Elazul assured her.

"That's not it at all," she told him.

It was not beauty that bothered her. It was the image staring back at her, an image that was herself but somehow still felt alien… an image that was ready to claim its birthright, was ready to contribute everything it could ever imagine, to give her life a meaning she had never dared to dream of.

But then again, perhaps the limits of her dreams were yet another confine from which to break free. She no longer _dreamed_ of an existence that meant something more… she _was_ that existence, and it was her.

It was time to use her imagination, and find something _beyond_. Whether it was fate or choice that drove her… she would be there to experience it. That was what legends, large and small, were created from.

She switched from regarding her own reflection to gaze at Elazul, visible in the mirror seated only a short way behind her.

He looked pretty much the same as he ever had, even keeping his sword as no guardian ever had. Then again, he was not truly a guardian, but a wielder of Mana, the first such to be seen in a millennium. And she was no ordinary knight, she was a queen of the Goddess. Hence the clothes.

She reached automatically for the hair-sticks lying on the table, but her hand shrank away. "You're not going to put them in?" Elazul asked.

Ariesa hesitated. "They don't go with the clothes," she said. "They're too simple."

Elazul did not respond, but wordlessly got up and joined her side. One arm rested on her shoulder, and the other hand reached for one of her decorations. He gently slid the end into her thick hair, and with surprising deftness, twisted it and secured it in place. He followed it with another, and another, until finally her hair was held the way it had always been.

"How did you know how to do that?" she asked, touched but surprised.

"From watching you, a hundred times," he said, smiling, then dropping the expression as he made the final adjustments to his work. "This is better. You'll want to feel like yourself, where we're going."

They were going to the Empire. With Mana returned, the world was slowly coalescing into what she thought and hoped it had once been meant to be. But not everything was perfect; there were still plenty left to be done, and much of the world was still not free.

But they had time.

Bud and Lisa sat together, mutely, on the bench from which they used to love to gaze outside. It was _theirs_, now, that and the rest of the house. They weren't entirely happy about it.

Bud was back from the White Forest for a little bit, and Lisa had actually separated from Thoma for a bit, to see Ariesa and Elazul off. Ariesa noticed with amusement that they had both changed their hair. Bud had trimmed it a bit, and though it still hung in his eyes, it had that messy look of… well, _Elazul_. Lisa rarely wore hers in a ponytail now, leaving soft purple waves trailing down her back.

It was symbolic, in a way, of their entry into adulthood. She had always known it was inevitable… but now, like many things that had been thrust upon her, it felt like it had come on too fast.

The goodbyes were gentle, brief, but sniffly nevertheless. Lisa wept openly, and Bud tried to pretend he didn't want to do much the same. For her part, Ariesa let her tears flow gloriously free, and though Elazul shed no tears, he didn't need to. Their bond let her know those same tears were inside him, even if they could not be seen.

She took a deep breath, and together, they rose to leave, not knowing when they would return – or even if. _It doesn't matter,_ she thought to herself. Home was wherever they were together.

As they walked down the path that led from her house, she found she actually _missed_ the sproutlings that used to litter the place. She was dwelling on that idea when Elazul suddenly started.

"What is it?" she asked him.

"Pearl." He paused. "I think she just wanted to say hi. I feel like she is so childlike in some ways… but at the same time, something far beyond. Something I'm still not sure I understand, but I've learned to appreciate anyway."

"Well, we'll know more about that when we have a child of our own, won't we?" she told him suggestively. The blush that crossed his face was _enormously_ satisfying.

_It is all just a dream in the end_. That was something Daena had told her. Perhaps she was right; it was a dream that had started this all, hadn't it? But was it all so simple, the past receding into hidden secrets? Even as memories faded away, their arms reached further than perhaps any ordinary human might have dreamed possible.

_Maybe it _was_ all a dream, _she thought, and snuck a glance at Elazul_. But some things are worth it._

They had not moved from the spot since Elazul had paused in mid-stride, and she leaned in closer to him, prompting him with a quick, flirtatious nudge. He gently wrapped his arms around her, she leaning her head against his chest, his core; she sighed contentedly, soaking in the rays of Mana that she felt as clearly as the sunshine warming her face. She placed her fingertips against his core, fingering it delicately, the Mana flowing within with a determination so strong it seemed to want to leap from his chest, the force of life itself flowing between them, through them, and all around them.

She turned her face to his dreamily, blue eyes meeting brown, adding just a little more to the moment than there had been before. "How does it feel?" Ariesa murmured.

"Itchy," Elazul replied.


End file.
